Grimm Awakening

by Bryan Smith

  Lucien leveled his most disdainful glare at each of them. “Yeah, okay, I get it. It’s give the refugee from hell a hard time night. I’m glad you guys are having such a good time. I didn’t realize you transported us to an alternate world to party. Jack is facing torture and likely death and neither of you seems at all worried.” There was venom creeping into his voice now. “Why is that, Andy?”

  Andy leaned back in his chair. “Let me ask you something, Lucien. Do you remember the transference chant that brought us here?”

  “I remember a lot of Latin-sounding mumbo fucking jumbo coming out of your mouth.”

  Andy smiled. “Wasn’t Latin, actually. You wouldn’t recognize the language, of course. It’s not known in either my world or your version of hell.”

  “What do you mean, ‘my version of hell’?”

  “Just as the world of my birth is but one of an infinite number of earths evolving along different paths, your hell is one of many damnation realms.”

  “But that’s not...” Lucien left the thought unfinished. It occurred to him that proof of a multitude of hells was all around him. Logic dictated that inhabitants of this alternate earth unworthy of ascendance to heaven would not be consigned to the hell he knew. Logical or not, though, the concept was disconcerting.

  Lucien sighed. “Okay, I believe you. What’s it got to do with leaving Jack high and dry?”

  Andy tapped a Marlboro out of a pack and lit it. “Just this--the transference chant was derived from knowledge handed down through generations of master wizards. Not of my world, of course. Nor of this one. Or any other alternate earth. This clan of wizards ruled a world that wasn’t even in our galaxy. Through some means I still don’t understand Theodore Grimm gained knowledge of many of that powerful clan’s most carefully guarded secrets. Dark and powerful magic. A fraction of which he has passed on to me.” He paused to blow a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “You already know that the transference chant allows us to move between realms. It also freezes time.”

  Lucien guffawed. He could swallow a lot of far-fetched concepts. He came from hell, after all. But this was too much, even for him. “That’s crazy. What if something were to happen to us here? Suppose we never get back to your world--am I supposed to believe it’d just stay stuck in time forever?”

  Andy shook his head. “No. And it wouldn’t. Stay stuck, that is. Time-freezing occurs when one uses a modification of the transference chant. The effect is temporary. We have a few hours, at best.” He smiled. “You see, there’s a catch to using the time-freezing trick. If we don’t transfer back to our world before time there snaps back into motion, we’ll be stuck in this world. Forever.”

  “Why couldn’t we get back by just doing the transference chant again?”

  Andy shrugged. “Don’t know. All I do know is we could hop between all the other planes of reality almost at will, but our own would be lost to us for good.”

  Lucien shook his head. “Damn.”

  Andy lit a fresh cigarette from the dwindling stub of his first. “Don’t worry. We’ll make it back in plenty of time. I’ve no intention of allowing any other outcome.”

  Delilah arrived bearing their drinks on a red tray. She set each red-tinted glass on a red napkin. “You fellas want anything to eat tonight?”

  Andy sipped stout. “Perhaps later, Delilah. We have business to discuss first.”

  Delilah’s demeanor shifted with this information. No longer playing the role of flirty sexpot, she exuded an air of cool professionalism. “Of course, sir. Should I excuse myself from the Red Room for the duration of your discussion?”

  Andy’s face took on a contemplative cast. He sipped more stout and tapped another bit of ash into the ashtray. “I think so,” he said at last. “There is one thing you could bring us. The Eye of Sylvain. There’ll be an additional fee, I know.”

  A small, inscrutable smile touched Delilah’s mouth. “Yes, sir. I’ll let Mr. O’Scanlon know. He can collect the final fee when you leave. I’ll return with the Eye in a few moments. Feel free to refresh your drinks from the bar while I’m gone.”

  Andy smiled. “Thank you, Delilah.”

  She nodded and left them.

  Lucien watched her touch the seamless red wall with the tip of a finger. The outline of a door appeared at once and a doorknob seemed to form out of thin air. Delilah pulled the door open and stepped through it. The door closed and disappeared again.

  Lucien looked at Andy. “What in the blue fuck is the ‘Eye of Sylvain’? Is that some sort of horrific delicacy in this backward world’s culture?”

  Andy laughed. “Of course not.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Explanations should wait until the Eye arrives.” Andy lifted his glass of stout. “In the meantime, have a drink. Relax.” His gaze shifted to Siegel. “Ben, I think it’s time you shared some of your secrets with our new friend.”

  Lucien scrutinized the old man. “Secrets, eh? Yes, you must have many. A man with your history would have enough to fill a book, I’d imagine.”

  Siegel smiled. “Enough to fill a goddamn encyclopedia set, boy.”

  Lucien nodded. “Yes. Let’s hear some of your secrets, then.”

  Siegel refilled his glass from the whiskey bottle. “The first thing you should know is that I really am dead. I did not fake my death. Nor am I a ghost. Yes, I know, I look like a living man.” He raised his glass and tipped it in Lucien’s direction. “I do things a living man would do. However, I am deader than the proverbial doornail.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Siegel set the glass down. “I’m about to remedy that, son. I’ll tell you everything. And then you’ll see why you need me to get to your friend.”

  Lucien finally lifted his glass of bitter ale from the table. “I’m listening.”

  His initial reaction as the man began to tell his tale was deep incredulity. This soon gave way to mounting awe. And he began to believe that maybe the old man really was the key to getting to Jack.

  10.

  SIEGEL’S STORY

  I was one sick son of a bitch. A sociopath is what they’d call me nowadays. If you got in my way or tried to fuck me over, or if you just said something I didn’t like, you were a dead man. One thing you for damned sure didn’t want to do was call me ‘Bugsy’ to my face. You had to have balls of steel to do that. That or a lobotomy. Lot of guys back then were brainless, fearless wonders. There was a lot of lying, double-crossing, cheating, and scheming going on.

  And killing--let’s not forget the killing. From the early days in Brooklyn when Meyer Lansky and I were just a couple of swaggering punks trying to make a mark and up to the very last days in Vegas, my hands were bloody. I was a bad man, plain and simple. I was a Jew gangster and the Italians had no respect for us. So we had to be extra vicious to get them to take us seriously. Still, we had problems with them up until we knocked off the boss of bosses, Joe Masseria. Four of us hit him in a restaurant and I put six bullets in that piece of shit myself.

  Meyer and I were behind Murder, Inc., the top association of contract killers for decades. Killing was our business and business was good. I had not one iota of conscience, nor any sympathy for my victims. I’d kill enemies by the score without blinking, but I also wasn’t squeamish about knocking off friends I suspected had become compromised either by other mob factions or the FBI.

  I loved my life. I’m ashamed to say it now, but it’s the truth. When the mob sent me west to set up a syndicate there, I thought I’d gone to heaven. I mingled with the Hollywood elite and fucked I don’t know how many hot little starlets. Then I got the Vegas thing going, which the guys back east were always so antsy about. They wanted to kill me lot of times, but Meyer Lansky always talked them into giving me more time. Then, just when The Flamingo looked to be on the verge of becoming a huge success, I got knocked off in my own home. All I remember is a crash of gunfire and seeing my left eyeball fly across the room while my body got shot up.

/>   And that was that. Or it should have been, anyway. I was dead. My body was carted off to the morgue. Just like that, the great and feared Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel was just another hunk of meat on a slab. The end. Well, it was the end as far the world I’d known was concerned.

  For me, though, it was a new beginning.

  I woke up sitting in a chair in the morgue. One moment, there’s nothing, I don’t exist, then, BAM!, there I am, naked as the day I was born. I put a hand to my face to check the place where my eye used to be and you can imagine my surprise when I discovered it was somehow there again. I did a quick self-exam and discovered no wounds at all. It was a miracle. Somehow I was alive and whole again. I had no idea how I’d been restored--all I gave a damn about right then was getting revenge on whoever put the hit on me.

  I got up and started looking around for some clothes to put on. I wanted to get out of there before I ran into some morgue attendant I’d have to kill. So I grabbed a scalpel to use in the event of such an encounter. Then my eyes locked on a sheet-covered body on a table. I started walking toward it and I started shaking. The shaking got worse the closer I got to that table. The white sheet was stained a dark red across the belly and the head area. As I reached for the sheet the shaking in my hand was uncontrollable, like an old man with bad palsy. And all the while a voice in my head kept screaming at me to back away, but the need to see what was beneath that sheet was stronger.

  I pulled the sheet back and there I was. There was a big bloody hole where my eye had been. I’d been a handsome man, but now the sight of my own face revolted me. I let out a scream. I should have been heading for the door, naked or not, but I couldn’t tear myself away from this appalling vision.

  After a while, I regained some composure. I looked at the body on the table and shook my head in total stupefaction. How, I wondered, could there be two of me? Because, okay, there was my still and lifeless corpse on the table. I didn’t look so good, but there was no denying the body was mine. Yet, I was now inhabiting an intact and apparently healthy body. I looked around for a mirror and found one above a sink. I was relieved to see my own face staring back at me. For a split-second, I’d thought maybe my soul had jumped into some other man’s body. It sounds vain as fuck now, but my big worry in that moment was that I might’ve landed in an ugly man’s body.

  Anyway, I returned my attention to my former body. Because that’s how I was already thinking of it. I had two bodies, an old one and a new one. The old one was no good to me anymore, so I was walking around in this new one. Like as if I’d gone to a store to replace an old shirt with a new one. I’d never heard of such a thing happening and I was pretty sure it had be a rare phenomenon. It would’ve been in the papers if guys all over were getting new bodies when their old ones died. I didn’t keep up with current events a hell of a lot, but things like that made the news, you know?

  I pinched myself. Hard. It hurt. I held a hand up to my mouth and felt my breath. I nicked the ball of my thumb with the scalpel. It bled. I sucked the blood into my mouth and tasted it. That old salty tang. It was a taste I knew well. I was pretty sure by now that I was real and not some delusional ghost bumping around the morgue. Which left me with the mystery of just what in the hell was going on and how there’d come to be two of me.

  I stood over my corpse again and stared at it for I don’t know how long. It was a while. Maybe as much as an hour. How that much time could pass in a big city morgue without someone coming in I don’t know. Maybe it was really only fifteen minutes and just seemed longer. I felt sort of numb and empty, so maybe. Then I had an impulse, the kind of crazy fucking thing you’d never do if you took a moment to think about it. I plunged the scalpel blade into the place where the corpse’s eye had been.

  I felt the blade enter my new head.

  I screamed and let go of the scalpel. After a few moments, the pain of the blade entering my flesh faded. I blinked and was able to see again. Everything had gone gray for a while. I put a hand to my eye and was relieved to find it still intact. I looked again at the corpse. The scalpel handle jutted from my eye. The corpse’s eye. I tapped the flat of the handle as softly as I could manage and felt a fresh twinge of pain. I shook my head in disbelief. The thing on the table was clearly dead. Somehow, I was separate from it now--and yet I was still tied to it enough to feel pain when it was injured. To say I found this unnerving is a world-class understatement.

  But it wasn’t nearly as unnerving as the next thing that happened. From somewhere behind me, in the middle of a room I’d been sure was empty (except for me and the stiffs, of course), a voice spoke: “I’ve seen a lot of dumb things in my time, Bugsy, but that’s got to be one of the dumbest.”

  I reached for the scalpel.

  And the voice said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  I didn’t listen, of course. I ripped the scalpel from the corpse and for a moment again felt the presence of the blade in my new head. We’re talking the smallest increment of time possible. Less than a second. Less than a millisecond. But that brief burst of agony was enough to send me tumbling to the floor.

  When my vision cleared again, I looked up to see the strangest looking man I’d ever seen. He was tall. Freakishly so. Like a giant. Basketball players are fuckin’ midgets by comparison. He stood stooped over, like a man used to keeping his head down to avoid low-hanging things--which, for this guy, was basically every goddamn thing. His limbs were long and thin and they looked kind of…elastic. I had a feeling he could stretch an arm all the way across the room if he wanted. He looked ridiculous, dressed sort of like how I imagine a medieval court jester would look. His red shoes had tips that curled up. Everything else was green, including the jester’s hat with bells attached to the little thingamabobs.

  I thought I was hallucinating. I’d heard stories of the visions rummies sometimes got when they got the hangover shakes. Snakes and giant spiders crawling in corners, that kind of thing. But I wasn’t drunk or hungover, which left just one possibility.

  The son of a bitch was real.

  “Yes, Bugsy,” it said. “I’m as real as that corpse over there.”

  And it could read minds.

  I don’t know what terrified me more--the fact of the giant’s existence or knowing he could see into my brain with ease. An enemy like that...well, clearly there was only one way to deal with him. I raised the scalpel over my head and geared myself up to lunge at him.

  But the giant waved a hand at me and I froze. I mean, I was like a statue. Fucking paralyzed. The guy plucked the scalpel from my hand and tossed it across the room. He pushed aside some tables and sat on the floor, curling his legs beneath him.

  I was just about eye level with him now and I saw that his eyes were a shimmering shade of violet. Fucking violet. Jesus. Right then I thought of another possibility. He was a mutant, like outta some sci-fi story. It made instant sense to me. This guy had been too close to one of those atomic tests they were doing out in the desert. The radiation clouds had made his limbs grow and twist in unnatural ways. And, Christ, his eyes were shooting radioactive beams at me!

  The giant laughed and said, “I am not a mutant. And I don’t mean you any harm. I’m here to enlist your aid in a great cause. I’m going to tell you some things, then you can make a decision. Whether you help me or not will be entirely up to you. I need you to know these things before I release you from paralysis.”

  Then he snapped his fingers and I could move again.

  “Sit down, Bugsy.”

  So I sat down. What else could I do? “I’d prefer it if you called me Ben,” I told him. I didn’t threaten to gut him like a fish, which I’d normally do when some jamoke used that goddamn nickname to my face. “Who the fuck are you? And, ah, what are you?”

  He spread his arms wide--a really impressive sight, given this guy’s fucked-up anatomy--and said, “I am lord of this domain.”

  “What, Las Vegas?”

  He laughed. “What you call Las Vegas, yes.”r />
  Then it was my turn to laugh. “I’ve got news for you, pal. The mob runs this place. I’m the lord of this fucking domain. I don’t know who you are, but you’re a delusional fuck.”

  But the giant just smiled and nodded. “Yes, you and your henchmen run the city Las Vegas. But you are merely would-be usurpers. My people were here long before you, and long before anyone else.”

  “Well, that’s great,” I said to him, thinking I was dealing with a loony. “Very interesting. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a wrecking crew to round up.”

  The giant said, “No.”

  “No?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said again.

  I was dumbfounded for a moment. Then my pride came surging back. I was angry. I didn’t take any lip off anyone, not even giant leprechaun jesters. “Look, buster--”

  “QUIET!”

  That voice was so commanding, so thunderous, so...all-encompassing. That one word seemed to dominate existence itself when it boomed out. I was shocked. By the way, we were still alone. I couldn’t believe people weren’t streaming into the room to see if there’d been some sort of explosion. No one came. As the moments trickled by, shock gave way to fear.

  Let’s put it this way--he had my full attention now.

  He told me, “Benjamin, your life among the criminals is at an end.” He nodded at the corpse on the table. “That man is gone forever. You’re beginning a new life now. What kind of life it will be is up to you. But you have a chance to right some of the wrongs done by Bugsy.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, yeah. You’ve said that. But you haven’t told me why. It sounds like you’ve got some kind of job for me, but I need more information if I’m gonna accept it--and bear in mind I’m still not saying I will.”

  “Of course,” he said “I’ll tell you some of the things you want to know, as well as the things you need to know. Starting with my name. I am Lord Hex Rainbolt, the patriarch of an ancient desert clan, a race of almost-immortals descended from the first beings to rule this world. We live hundreds of years. I myself am over four-hundred years old.”