The Gretel Series: Books 1-3 (Gretel #1-3)

by Christopher Coleman

  “But you know where she went! That’s what I don’t get. Why don’t you just find out if she’s okay?”

  Georg felt the sting of the boy’s words, accusatory and hurt.

  A tear rolled down Petr’s cheek. “Why can’t you just tell me? Why don’t you trust me? Still?”

  Georg grabbed Petr by the back of the neck and pulled him to his chest, holding him there for a few beats. “We do trust you Petr. With our lives. But this secret is not ours to give to anyone. Including you. Mrs. Morgan was explicit about that.”

  Petr pulled away and looked hard into his guardian’s eyes. “But what happens when something happens to you? How do I tell Gretel? How will I get in touch with her?”

  “What do you mean, ‘when something happens to us?’ Nothing will happen to us. Not any time soon anyway. And we will hear from her soon. I believe that. Gretel is fine. She’s fine. She’s doing what you’re doing, that’s all. She’s searching.” He smiled. “And if something does happen to me, then Aman—Mrs. Klahr will know how to get in touch with her. And she will, I promise. We just have to wait for her a little longer, Petr. We swore we would, so that’s our only real choice right now.”

  Petr gave a reluctant nod, never releasing Mr. Klahr’s gaze. “Just stay careful, Georg. Please stay careful.”

  Georg flashed a wide smile at this warning, holding the hoe up to his chest, gripping it tightly with both hands. “You sound like Mrs. Klahr.” His smile softened, and then, “I promise I will be careful. Too old to push myself too hard.”

  “Not that Georg. Keep doing that. Keep getting stronger. You need to stay careful because this isn’t over. She is alive. I know she is. And we’re going to have to be ready.

  Chapter 3

  The woman estimated the trek to the Back Country would take two full days if she followed the road; it would be a little more than half that time if she took to the woods. There were pros and cons to both routes, but after weighing them all, it was clear that the forest was the only option. It wasn’t so much the time that made the difference for her, it was the fear of being seen and questioned by some curious citizen. Or the System. In a manner as graceful and violent as any predator on the planet, she rid herself of that ambitious Officer Stenson, but it was still possible—probable even—that others in the organization were eager to challenge the miracle. Any organization as cliquey and testosterone-laced as a police force certainly didn’t keep secrets well. And once word leaked of her sempiternal recipe, there would be more than one or two lionhearts who would risk it all for a taste of the magic.

  And there was the more pressing issue of the boys.

  She had slaughtered the two troublemakers, but the third had run off. It was only a matter of time before he told of his escapades with his friends on her property. Maybe it wouldn’t be immediately, but eventually he would tell, especially when his friends—or brother—didn’t show up for dinner and the parents started asking questions. The local police would then come search the property, and the System wouldn’t be far behind.

  And what if they found the bodies?

  This was perhaps a dangerous prospect, but perhaps not. Based on the boys’ conversation, the discovery of their bodies wouldn’t much matter. From what she could determine, her case had been closed. She was dead in the minds of the world. No one would suspect she was responsible for the disappearances or murders of two kids this many months after she herself had been slain and presumably hauled away by a pack of wild animals. Any heinous acts discovered on her property would surely be attributed to some copycat fanatic who had fallen in love with her story, an avid follower of the infamous tale of Anika Morgan.

  That was all true, of course, unless someone spotted an old woman cloaked in a dark robe, ambling down a deserted road in the Northlands. In that case, there may be a few more questions.

  No, her route would have to be through the forest. She would never again take the silly risks she took at the beginning of this saga.

  The woman decided she would start out at night, which would mean she would arrive around dawn on the second day. That was the plan. Sleep would be short along the way, and only during the day. She would walk all night. She’d bring food and enough water for a day. There would be no time to waste foraging. If she encountered any hikers or hunters along the way, she would assess their threat and deal with them as necessary. She didn’t foresee the need to kill anyone else, but the option for such measures was always available to her.

  There would also be no opportunity to harvest the young boys. Her instincts had propelled her to kill them, to flaunt her newfound strength and agility, but there was no time or resources to use them. The act was senseless in retrospect, but it was almost automatic. Just as a philanderer might cheat on his beautiful spouse, even when there was sex to be had at home, she too was driven by a similar instinct, albeit one that was far more gruesome and lasting. It had been the first challenge of her resurrection. Practice for the ultimate game. A not-so-dry run of the performance ahead. She knew now for sure that she was still capable and virile, and that the hibernation had only enhanced her desires.

  The woman opened the back door and descended the rotting steps to the yard. She surveyed the edge of the forest, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at the empty shadows that lurked there, and then walked briskly back to the ditch where she had slept for the last many months. She peered into the empty space in the ground and focused on the dirty glass vial and the liquid inside. The container sat propped up in the corner of the narrow space, and the swig of potion that remained was barely noticeable through the film of time and soil. There were perhaps three last sips remaining. It was enough to keep her alive for two years or more, enough to keep her at this strength for three or four months.

  She sat on the edge of the hole and eased herself back inside. She had to admit, the construction of this trench was very impressive, especially considering that it had been an ad hoc endeavor, done almost as an afterthought. In the end, however, it was the reason for her survival, being perfectly camouflaged with the landscape of her property.

  The System fools obviously suspected nothing. She had listened closely when they came, the villainous trove of men who tromped around her property and barked inane orders and benign discoveries to each other. None of what she heard from the thieves concerned her whereabouts; instead they focused on the girl—Anika. They tried to figure the whys and hows of the whole capture, hoping to corroborate the facts her Source had no doubt revealed in the aftermath. What they weren’t intending to do was dig. Anika and Gretel were both alive; there wouldn’t have been any reason to put resources into digging up a yard searching for bodies that weren’t missing.

  Except for hers perhaps. Her body had not been found.

  The cannery was obviously empty when the System arrived, and no detective worth his badge would have believed her body was dragged off by wolves or stray dogs. Their likely conclusion would have been that, despite the undoubtedly gruesome description of the night’s events given by her Source, the witch had survived the attacks of the Morgan women. The evidence would have been obvious. The handprints around her bloody landing spot. The trail she no doubt left behind on the stone floor as she made her way back to the open field. Even the most inept detective would have deduced she made it out alive, and without evidence of a second set of prints or a smattering of bloody paw tracks, she had made it out alone.

  They were looking for her during their investigation, she now realized. Of course they were. Now that she thought it through, she had no doubt. But they hadn’t looked underground. They would have never thought to dig. It was illogical.

  Besides, making it out of the cannery alive was one thing. Traveling from the Back Country to her cabin in the Northlands was another thing altogether. The System obviously knew she made it out of the cannery, but they likely assumed she died soon after, somewhere beyond in the closest forest.

  Now, here she was, back in the ditch, considering whether to bury the
boys here or to take them far into the woods and bury them, eventually to be dug up and devoured by feral woodland creatures. It would take a lot of effort, the dragging and digging and such, but with the third boy possibly reliving his story right now, the System would be returning soon—sooner than she originally calculated, and probably with dogs. And they would be looking for graves this time. Everything would be exposed, including real evidence that she was still alive.

  The woman grabbed the vial and snuck it into the pocket of her robe, nestling it to the bottom fabric and pulling the drawstring taut on her pocket. She climbed her way back to ground level and looked despairingly at the perfect grass canopy and the stilts of wood that kept it aloft over her during her sleep of recovery. That would now have to be retrofitted. She couldn’t leave such an obvious trace. And so she made another decision. She would take the boys to the woods and bury them.

  But first she had a hole to fill.

  Chapter 4

  Carl Dodd sped past the fallen tree for the fifth time today, and probably the thousandth time in the past eight months. He hadn’t missed a day since he last walked off the property with the rest of the System officers, having spent the better part of two days searching a wide perimeter surrounding the tiny house. When he later indicated on his official report that no evidence of the woman had been found, he was, of course, lying.

  He couldn’t see the cottage from the road at this vantage point, but each time he passed the rotting oak, he knew it was there, just beyond the foliage, hiding. He’d measured the coordinates precisely, so he always knew where he was in relation to the ramshackle hut, but it was at this point on the stretch of highway that he was closest. Right here at the tree.

  On most occasions, as it was on this day, the road was as desolate as the Sahara. But on those rare occasions when he came across another car, Dodd always stopped it, pulling the motorist over under the guise of a warning about speeding or swerving or to inform the driver that there was no trouble, it’s just that the vehicle fit the description of some other vehicle that had been stolen from a surrounding area. In truth, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d read a report of a car being stolen anywhere outside the Urbanlands, but who were they to question him?

  He would keep looking for her. Keep waiting for her to emerge. If she was alive, which he was almost positive she was, he wouldn’t let her sneak away.

  “Dodd, where the hell are you?”

  Dodd glared at the radio, wishing he could reach through the receiver and strangle the wretched cunt on the other end. Leave me alone!

  When he started with the System twelve years ago, he didn’t give much of a damn about the job; today what he felt was nothing short of disdain. He grabbed the microphone and pushed the talk button, pausing for just a moment to compose himself. “This is Dodd.”

  “Dodd, where are you?”

  “Patrol. Out on Western right now. Something afoot?” Dodd released the radio button. “Because I’ve got a foot I’d like to put up your ass.”

  “What? Western? Why are you way out there? And where have you been? I’ve been calling you.”

  Lately Dodd had gotten into the habit of turning his radio off during these patrols. It was so quiet out here, and the constant crackling and blipping of the radio shook him from his concentration. He wanted all his senses clear when she finally surfaced.

  “Dodd?”

  “Yeah, I had to exit my cruiser for a few moments. Thought I saw something run into the woods,” he lied. He hoped there wouldn’t be any follow-up about his reasoning for being miles from his typical patrol area.

  “Maybe you did,” the voice on the other end of the radio replied. “There are some boys that have gone missing.”

  Dodd felt the blood clear from his head, and a knot formed instantly in his chest and gut. He swallowed. “Boys?” he said, trying his best to sound disinterested.

  “Two. Both twelve years old. Went missing yesterday afternoon.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Yeah, I know, we just got the call from one of the parents. Let’s just say none of them have plaques in the Parent Hall of Fame.”

  “Where?”

  “You say you’re on Western, correct? Depending on where you are on Western, they may have been right near you. The two missing boys and one other. The third boy is the one who finally reported the other two missing.”

  “Where?” Dodd repeated, this time with a bit more snap.

  “You remember that old cabin, right? The Witch of the North?” The dispatcher put a spooky spin on the title.

  If the woman on the radio said anything after that, Dodd didn’t hear it. He suddenly couldn’t breathe, and for a few moments he was afraid he might pass out. He pulled the car to the shoulder and closed his eyes, focusing on the news he had just received and the work that laid ahead.

  “...so the boy thinks that...”

  “I’m on my way.”

  DODD PULLED UP TO THE cabin six minutes later and hopped out of his cruiser without any concern about who or what might be lurking. He wasn’t ignorant to the possibility of danger, and he knew intimately the story of Officer Stenson and the brutal end he met. In fact, Dodd was one of the first officers on the scene after the whole story was told, witnessing with his own eyes the crumpled body and mangled neck of his fellow agent. He wouldn’t have called Stenson a friend exactly, but he remembered the sadness he felt for him. All that time invested in the woman and her promises, only to be used as fodder.

  Dodd walked to the first step of the front porch and then veered left toward the side of the house. Some of the brush had been trampled, but it was impossible to tell who had caused it. Raccoons? Children? An old woman?

  He unbuckled his side arm and rested his palm on the butt. He strode at a normal pace toward the backyard, keeping his head on a swivel until he reached the place where the pit should have been.

  The awning had been spectacular in its camouflage. The seamlessness of the grass roof, reinforced by wooden beams and plywood, gave no indication that the ground had been altered in anyway. No one, not even a skilled investigator, could have known about the ancient monster replenishing below. Her concealment was almost absolute. If he hadn’t been looking for it, not the grave exactly, but for something similar, he would never have seen it either. Even now, having studied the ground and landmarking the spot for months, he couldn’t find it.

  Officer Dodd smashed the long stick into the ground where he believed the roof was, expecting the sound and feel of a wooden plank or thin plywood. Instead there was only earth.

  But he was sure it was here.

  Dodd dropped to his knees and examined the ground more closely. The overgrown brush made the grass line difficult to follow; if this was the floor, this was the only perspective from where he would be able see it. He crawled a few feet to his left, where he thought the tomb was, and finally saw it: a small pile of dirt mounded up about six inches off the ground. He ran his fingers through the mound and then realized what had happened. Dodd was at the spot, exactly, but the woman was gone, and the tomb where she lain for all those months had been filled. She was on the loose, and he had let her escape.

  Chapter 5

  We have to go back.

  Gretel’s eyes snapped open and began blinking frantically, obediently trying to locate enough light in the dim surroundings to see, desperate to remind their master where she was. It didn’t take long, as the moonlight lit the far side of the room. Gretel could see a lump of wool blanket in the shapes of knees and feet. Hansel. She was aligned again, aware now of her place in the world.

  This wasn’t an every-night occurrence for her, this frantic, late-hour disorientation, but for the last two weeks, it was most. And it was always triggered by the same five words. We have to go back. The phrase came not in a dream, but audibly, as if whispered to her by a ghost. There were no real phantoms muttering to her, of course, and the phrase was neither menacing nor panicked, but there was the weight of truth to
it, something not to be ignored, and with her newfound lessons in the magical ways of the cosmos, she’d be damned if she would cast it aside.

  Gretel glanced at the clock and saw it was quarter past two in the morning—too early to get up and too late to attempt going back to sleep, so she did neither, and instead lay still in her musty, yet comfortable bed, pondering her next move. It was time to tell her mother. She would do it tomorrow.

  Gretel clicked the knob on her bedside lamp, and a dull halo of light appeared. She peeked over at Hansel once more and then, seeing no movement, reached beneath the bed and pulled out the book. She opened it absently, randomly fingering a page amongst the first hundred or so, and began reading. This was a common practice of hers now, as common as any devout Christian would read the Bible on a Sunday afternoon. And with no less reverence.

  Gretel still couldn’t believe the book she was reading was the same one she had first spotted in the cellar of her grandfather’s house so many years before, and the same one that had brought so much disruption and tragedy, as well as intrigue and travel, to her quiet, rural life. And misery. She must never forget the misery.

  But here it was. Orphism, as cold and black as ever, not just in her possession, but clear and accessible, translated almost completely without gaps or discrepancies. The village elders, the ones who had fled the mountains of the ancients generations earlier, had been intimately versed in the language of the book and had translated the symbols without any coaxing or suspicion or fear. Gretel had thought they were almost amused at the request, flattered even, that there were those who still existed in the world with an interest in the ways of their people.

  Gretel was never quite sure during those translation sessions if they believed in any of the book’s powers. Her mother seemed to think they didn’t believe and that they valued Orphism only for the tradition and culture it contained. But Gretel had her doubts about that theory. She thought maybe they truly did know of the book’s power, yet instead of cowering from it the way those of the modern world had been conditioned to do, they simply accepted it as a part of life. Like the vastness of space or the depths of the sea, both contain agents capable of awesome destruction, yet neither cause angst or fear for most people from one day to the next.