by Hal Bodner
She reached the threshold of the bedroom and saw a prone figure in the cot, swaddled in linens and woolen blankets. A fetid stink filled the air, and Red gagged at the thought of changing the old woman’s soiled sheets or emptying her overflowing chamber pot.
“Grandmama? I’ve brought you some good things to eat. They will give you your strength back in no time, I’m sure.”
“Come closer, dear.”
Red hesitated. That was not her grandmother’s voice. Her heel slipped a little as she moved toward the bed and she saw that there was a dark, greasy puddle at her feet. Her heart thumped wildly, the blood thundering inside her head.
Her eyes began to adjust to the low light, and Red knew for certain that the body in the bed was too big to be her grandmother’s. The stench intensified with each step, and now she recognized the metallic tang of blood under a nauseating whiff of human excrement.
“Closer,” the thing in the bed whispered, and turned towards her a little, revealing the monstrous size of its head.
Red’s stomach fluttered.
“Oh Grandmama,” she said quietly. “What big ears you have.”
A low rumble of laughter emanated from the bed.
“All the better to hear you with, my dear.”
The voice was guttural and wrong. It was not the voice of a woman or a man. More like a dog trying to mimic a human master. Red took another step towards the bed. Something pale and snake-like glistened on the floor under the bed. The smell was terrible. The thing in the bed faced her, bedclothes tucked up over the lower half of its face, huge eyes yellow and round. Animalistic.
“And Grandmama! What big eyes you have.”
“All the better to see you with.”
Red’s knees hit the edge of the bed and she stumbled forward into the soft pile of blankets. She reached up and tugged the covering from the muzzle of the wolf. Its mouth hung open, blood smeared on its teeth. Its tongue lolled over pointed canines as it panted hot gusts.
Red glanced down at the floor and saw long, gnarled fingers, the joints swollen and blue. There was a ring on the littlest digit. Her mother’s gold wedding band. Grandmother had started wearing it after they dragged her daughter-in-law’s body from the mill pond. Red knew in her bones that if anyone had cared to check, there would have been belladonna berries in her mother’s stomach. The poor woman had stumbled, delirious and confused, to her doom. God only knew what she had seen, what conjuring of her poisoned mind had made her go into the water, but once there, the paralysis had seized her body and she had surrendered quickly and quietly to her death. Red’s grandmother finally had one less rival for her son’s affections, but it was to be a short-lived victory.
“Oh, Grandmama … what big teeth you have.”
The wolf leant forward and huffed hot, meaty breath on her face.
“All the better … to eat you with!” The wolf growled and licked his lips. “But I am replete tonight, so maybe just a little taste …”
Red gasped and fell back against the counterpane. She hitched her skirts up around her waist and the wolf fell upon her greedily, burying his snout between her thighs.
Red giggled and squirmed in pleasure.
“Did she suffer?” she whispered.
“Most assuredly,” the wolf hissed before tearing at her undergarments with his claws.
“Good,” she said, and pushed his head down.
The wolf’s tongue was long and rough and wily. Red’s head thrashed from side to side, and she closed her eyes when she found herself caught in the unseeing stare of her grandmother’s milky irises. The old woman’s head had been ripped from her body and had come to rest against the wall. Red’s father’s head had come clean off too, when the rope around his neck pulled taut at the end of the long drop from the rafters in the barn. It was almost comical and she had laughed a little bit before she vomited onto the hay covering the floor.
“How do you like me, in this form?”
The lupine voice brought her attention back to the present. Red snagged her fingers in the wolf’s fur.
“I like you well enough,” she said as the creature covered her body with his enormous bulk. The autumn moon was full and bright, its light streaming through gaps in the shutters.
“You’re a strange one, Little Witch,” the wolf snarled. “Fearless. Did I read you right out there in the wood earlier? Did I do as you wanted? Or would you have ended her life by your own hand?”
Red fingered the silver key on the chain around her neck and tugged on the wolf’s choker.
“It is little reason to keep a dog and bark yourself,” she said. “Besides, I wanted her to feel true terror before she departed this world. Now howl for me. I want to hear the beast loosed.”
The wolf’s hips hunched and he threw his head back. The noise which tore out of him was enough to rattle the window panes. Red shrieked and pulled at his thick pelt.
“Again!”
The wolf howled, and Red squealed. They made such a din that it took Red by surprise when the axe buried itself deep in the wolf’s skull and the full weight of him slumped forward onto her slight frame, crushing the wind out of her lungs.
“Red! Red! Dear God! Are you all right, child?”
The woodsman wrenched the axe out of the creature’s head and pulled her from under the carcass. Red gathered her ruined garments about her and the woodsman turned away. She forced a sob into her voice.
“That cursed beast killed my Grandmama and would have ravaged me if you had not come when you did. I owe you my life, sir.”
Red buried her face in the woodsman’s shoulder and listened to the frantic tattoo of his heart.
“We must get you away from here. An innocent girl like you should never have to see such horrors.”
Red let herself be steered out of the bedroom, out of the house and out into the night air before she stopped and shrugged off the woodsman’s arm.
“Wait! Please! There is something I must do.”
“I will come with you,” said the woodsman.
“No. Please. Stay here. I will be but a moment.”
Red scurried back into the house. This time her feet left dainty, bloody prints on the floor. She went first to where her grandmother’s body lay scattered about the bed and floor. She picked up the severed hand and wrenched her mother’s ring from the swollen finger and placed it upon her own. She stepped back around the bed and looked down at the now human form lying in the middle of a dark, spreading stain on the counterpane. She turned the body onto its back, flinching when a glob of brain leaked out of the cloven head. His face was unscathed though, and almost peaceful. Red took the key from around her neck and unlocked the choker. She slipped it off the cadaver and tucked it into her clothes.
She fell to her knees and prised up the loose floorboard under the bed, lifting it, and reaching down into the crawl-space for the pouch she knew was concealed there. Her fingers found it, and she hauled up the heavy bag. The pleasing jangle of gold and silver pieces made her smile. She hid the purse in her skirts. She fumbled in the nightstand for the striking flint and steel, and tipped the contents of the bedside lamp over the gory bed. It took a few attempts, but finally Red made a spark big enough to set the oil-soaked sheets aflame.
She took one last look around the ramshackle old cottage she had once called home after she became an orphan, and felt nothing but peace as the flames spread. The werewolf’s body caught and started to burn. Soon the cleansing fire would consume the old woman’s remains as well, and the house and all its secrets and miseries would be razed to the ground.
Red turned on her heel and saw the hamper on the table. She picked it up and strode out of the fiery room. There was no sense wasting good food.
She hoped the woodsman liked salted pork.
About the Author
Katie Young is a writer and occasional zombie movie ‘supporting artiste’. She also works in kids’ TV but wishes she were a rock star. She has various shorts available from Ether Bo
oks, and features in anthologies from Collaboration of the Dead Press, Angelic Knight Press, Indigo Mosaic, Song Stories Press, Static Movement and Fox Spirit Books. Her story, Atelic, was shortlisted for the 2010 Writers’ & Artists’ Year Book short fiction prize, and she is a regular contributor to the Are You Sitting Comfortably? story-telling events run by White Rabbit. Katie also reviews TV series for The Cult Den. Her first novel, The Other Lamb, will be published by Curiosity Quills Press in August 2014. She lives in South East London with her partner and a second-hand cat. She is not a natural redhead.
Sweetheart, the Dream is Not Ended
A reimagining of “The Robber Bridegroom”
Gary W. Olson
On waking, Armin Hahn gagged, the taste of his bride-to-be filling his mouth. He spat hard, expelling a chunk of meat. His face was caked with a sticky liquid, in parts not yet dried. When he tried to scream, he barely managed a choking sound. He stumbled out of his bed and opened his eyes.
A shift of air made him realize his house was open to the outside world. The door stood open, as did all three of his windows. The shutters had been wrecked, as if with an axe. A bird cage, door open, lay in the dirt near the door. The great cask near the cellar was stained with a dark liquid. No cooking fire lit the hearth, though faint steam rose from the kettle hanging above.
In the early morning light, he clearly beheld the spatters of red, torn clothing strips, and glistening chunks in the straw and dirt of the floor. The room strongly reeked, and came much closer in Armin’s mind to smelling like the charnel house than his own.
He thought of the meat that had been in his mouth.
“Viveka …” he groaned.
At this sound, a mound of what he had taken to be clothing and debris shifted. A disheveled pile of straw-colored hair rose, exposing a pock-marked face. Though Armin’s bleary eyes couldn’t make out more, the sight was enough for him to recognize his friend and fellow carpenter, Eberhard Bohm.
“What … Armin?”
Armin guessed he appeared as awful to Eb as Eb did to him. He imagined his recently-cut brown hair as a ragged mess, his thin nose and ruddy cheeks caked with dirt, and his blue eyes bloodshot. With a groan, he sank to the dirt next to the cold hearth.
Eberhard pushed to a seated position, watching with what Armin thought was wariness. He was not prepared for the grin slicing his friend’s bear-like countenance, or for his booming laugh.
“By the saints, Armin,” said Eb, “how much ale did we pour down your gullet last night?”
Armin groaned. “You don’t understand, Eb. Last night … we … Viveka …”
Eb barked an even louder laugh. “Whatever you’re remembering didn’t involve your sweet bride. You’re thinking of Heidi, the barmaid who served us all the last night … including after we brought her back here.”
His friend’s leer and wink did little to improve Armin’s recollection. A chunk of Viveka had been in his mouth, he was sure. The more he considered, though, he realized he had no idea why he believed this to be so.
He cast his thoughts back, and realized he only recalled fragments from the night before. There had been a rousing celebration in the village of Resau’s only tavern, and as Eb implied, plenty of drinking. He vaguely recalled the suggestive smile of Heidi Vogel, whose long blonde hair was not dissimilar to that of Viveka, and who loved to flaunt the gold ring she had once stolen from an unobservant soldier. He recalled seeing, as through a distorted glass, Eb give a coin purse to Heidi.
He stroked his sticky beard as he considered, then gazed at the brown congealed mess on his fingers. Last night’s stew, he hoped.
“Where is Heidi, anyway?” asked Eb. The burly man pushed to his feet and pulled his stained shirt back to his shoulders. “Damn her hide, we gave her coin, and three kinds a’ that expensive wine we’d been saving. Hey, you think she went off with Otto?”
‘Otto’ was Otto Adler, a young woodcutter barely started on a beard to match his fine black hair. Armin remembered he, too, had been in the tavern that night, trying to keep up with their drinking. He didn’t recall Otto or Heidi coming back to his house, though Eb clearly did. If both Otto and Heidi had come, Armin guessed they had also left together. Otto was a good man, though just barely a man by count of years, and susceptible to the charms of a vivacious woman like Heidi. If Otto had money, Heidi would have found a way to charm him.
Before Armin could tell this to Eb, a squeal of hinges drew their attention. Something hard crashed into the floor behind the great cask, and a brightly colored green-yellow-and-red bird flew up. Eb ducked as it flew past and landed on the cage.
“So good,” the parrot said to them in singsong fashion. “So good so good. Do your will!”
“Who’s still alive up here?” a rough voice called.
“Eb and Arm, Grete,” Eb answered. “Not sure where Otto’s got to, or … damn the boy, I warned him!”
“Do your will!” called the parrot. Though the bird had been given to Armin by a traveler who had gotten it from a shop in Berlin and had grown tired of the novelty, he usually thought of it as his housekeeper’s. It only seemed to obey her.
“Shut up, Judda,” ordered Grete Koch, as she climbed into view. The old woman didn’t seem any worse for the morning, though he could hardly imagine how her visage might worsen. As it was, she appeared a pile of ragged, stitched-together cloths with a shriveled face and deep-sunk eyes. She shut the cellar door and considered Armin and Eb.
“Grete …” Armin started.
“The noise of the lot of you last night,” she snarled. “Judda’s already learned enough new words.”
“I thought he was a prophet,” Eb teased.
“He just repeats what’s said ‘round him,” Grete replied. She gave Eb a sharp look. “Which may well be prophecy to them who don’t listen to the words they’re saying.”
Eb barked another laugh, this one dismissive. “Just make us breakfast. Arm an’ I have a busy day ahead.”
Grete looked at Armin, who nodded. Though a guest, Eb had a habit of ordering Grete around as if he paid her to cook and clean, instead of Armin. She shuffled to the kettle, sniffed, then peered about the room at everything slopped on the walls and the floor.
“You should’ve saved some stew,” she sniffed.
“Do your will!” Judda squawked.
Armin tried to recall the night before in detail. He failed to summon any clear images, even now as he knew what must have happened. Nor could he fathom why he had been so sure he had a piece of his bride in his mouth on waking.
He thought of Viveka as he dressed, and how sweet it would be to finally be together. On more than one occasion, after her father had agreed to their union, he had tried to entice her to visit him. They had little time to talk in private and get to know one another, and her father had even encouraged her to go. She always gained a distant look in her eyes whenever he brought up the idea, though, as if the very idea of being alone in a house with him frightened her. No matter how he tried to convince her, she always made excuses.
Then, the day before, she finally assented. She would visit for a short while, only because he insisted. He went so far as to mark the trail with ashes, so she wouldn’t lose her way. All afternoon he waited, but she did not show.
No doubt, he decided, that was the reason he’d been so certain Viveka’s flesh had been in his mouth that morning, instead of a chunk from the stew. Her arrival had been on his mind all day long. The nightmare had used his longing and disappointment as fodder.
“Well,” grunted Eb, on seeing Armin in his clean clothes, “you’re about as presentable as you’re ever gonna get, I think. An’ you finally stopped looking like your ma just died.”
“Just had to consider a few things,” said Armin. He felt lighter than he had all morning, in good spirits at last. “What say we go?”
***
Hours later, in the shadow of the mill on the bank of the river, Armin and his bride sat at the most central of a collecti
on of wooden tables overflowing with food and strong drink. Armin, whose face was growing numb from all the smiling he felt compelled to do, kissed Viveka again, to the loud cheers of all present.
She was lovely to him. Barely five feet tall with a thin frame that had drawn some comments about how she might not be able to bear sturdy children—talk her father urged him to ignore—she somehow managed to be more real to Armin than anyone else. Her eyes were the key, he decided—sharp green pools that drank in the light of the world. Her other charms, from her long blonde hair to her delicate cheeks to her slender fingers, were quite fetching, he had to admit. Without those eyes, though, he doubted he would have favored her so.
Her father waited for the noise around him to subside. While a strong man, he was not a loud one, and preferred to talk in something close to a murmur. With Viveka, he shared only the sharp eyes and a certain birdlike thinness of frame. His unkempt grey hair and ruddy cheeks made him seem like a scarecrow, though Armin kept the observation to himself.
“It is customary,” said Brandt Muller, “for all in the wedding party to tell stories at this time. Stories about how they know Armin and my daughter … and in their cases, stories of one another.” He gave Armin a wry glance. “I will admit I took some persuading to even consider this young man. She is the treasure of my life, and I would not have her with just anybody.”
“That’s … right,” said Eberhard, who lifted himself into a more-or-less seated position to make this observation. Armin, next to him, scented the liquor on his breath, and hoped when the storytelling got around to him, he would either be sleeping or unable to speak with clarity. He feared what tale might come out. “You’re … a good man. My Arm’s a lucky man. Hey? Hey!”
