Grimm Woods

by D. Melhoff

  “Just this.” She motioned at a small stack. “You want one?”

  “Gimme a couple.”

  Brynn’s lips tightened—somewhere between a frown and a smile—and she picked up a wad of folders and passed it over. Together, they each opened a file and began to read.

  ____

  Despite his exhaustion—the kind of fatigue when a single sentence takes two or three passes to digest and every bone aches from the marrow out—Scott helped Brynn push through the records for the rest of the night, kept awake not by a fear of falling asleep and returning to his nightmare (although that was present too), but more by the intoxicating rush of information, those gumshoe jitters which tingled at the idea of finding the critical clue that could bring this goddamn bastard to justice.

  Between the two of them, they had covered a dozen folders as Tyrell dozed in the corner, his chest rising and falling beneath his yellow camper’s shirt.

  Scott’s first article had been a two-page spread that featured Harvey Combwell and his “Disney on a Dime” camp in the early seventies. Crownheart, it turned out, was far from the instant success one might expect. Harvey, the hardworking grandfather, had possessed plenty of heart but no knack for self-promotion. Thankfully, his son-in-law had known someone at WWJ-FM who could slip them the odd promo in between store-casts whenever camp registration opened up—provided they slipped him a six-pack (which was just about the best marketing deal in town). The Combwells were also fortunate to know people who worked at corner stores, movie theaters, and libraries across Michigan, and so little by little, the clan was able to spread word of their new camp among most cities and towns within a two-hundred-mile radius of the area already becoming known, much to Harvey’s delight, as “Grimm Woods.”

  Junk, junk, and more junk, Scott thought, his blood rising with every irrelevant article. Regardless, he plowed ahead.

  Another clipping announced the sale of the camp in 1978 to the Wriggley brothers for an undisclosed amount. Gossip columnist Sheila Rutts elaborated in the Michigan Daily article titled “‘See ya, Crownheart!’ Combwells jet with Wriggley cash to East Coast.” According to her interview from their Long Island beach house, the Combwells claimed they were happy to have sold the camp once their children outgrew its appeal, and they looked forward to seeing what the Wriggleys had in store. That wasn’t entirely true, however, as Scott discovered from the transcript of a radio interview in 1980 with Harvey himself, who admitted that he had been hesitant to sell the camp to the highest bidder. Harvey thought the Wriggley Corporation wouldn’t give the park the personal touch it deserved. In the end, it didn’t matter. The family had divided the money and left, living happily ever after on the white shores of the Hamptons’ yacht clubs, golf bunkers, and fishing docks.

  “What happened to Harvey?” Brynn asked, spying the article over Scott’s shoulder.

  “He offered to keep working here, but he fell and fractured his hip a month after the sale went through.” An obituary was stapled to the back. “Says he spent the rest of his life in Ludington until he died in his armchair at eighty-one years old after coming home from a matinee of The Fox and the Hound.” Apparently, Scott read, the pathologist ascertained it was a coronary, and how fitting, he thought, since what man’s heart wasn’t busted up after watching The Fox and the Hound?

  Scott set aside the obit and continued digging.

  Under the ownership of the Wriggley brothers, the camp broke ground on many of the structures that later defined its look and allure, namely the fort, the zip-line tower, and much of what became Storybook Square. According to the records, Crownheart’s popularity spiked in the early eighties before declining around ’85. Two years later, in 1987, the Wriggleys sold the camp to Eli Gerginson of Gerginson Landscaping, who took it on as a pet project.

  The rest is a royal clusterfuck, Scott thought, rubbing his forehead.

  Through the late eighties and all of the nineties, the camp changed hands almost half a dozen times. First, Eli was forced to sell the property to the Beaufort family after a rough winter wrecked many of the main buildings. From there, the Beauforts wanted to shut everything down and build a private chateau on the land; however, when a group of camp alumni started sending protest letters to the local papers, the family dropped the idea immediately. Michael Beaufort had plans to run for office, and he wilted at the idea of public backlash. After passing through Mark and Maureen Yaleman, Evan Malone, and Jimmy “The Money Whiz” Singer—who had so much Wall Street cash that he didn’t know where to put it—the park was in worse shape than ever. None of those owners had a scrap of business savvy among them (not even Jimmy, who, from the sounds of his interviews, was nothing more than a stock schmuck who happened to get lucky when everybody was getting lucky), and despite their best efforts, no one could make it work.

  The worst year had been 2004. Talk about a line of credit, Scott thought, holding up a stack of bank notices. I thought my loans made up a majority of the national debt. “‘Failure to pay the accrued interest,’” he read, “‘or communicate the intent to do so by the end of the week shall result in immediate action.’”

  “Shit,” Brynn said. “What happened?”

  Scott held up a document showing Charlotte A. Becker purchasing the camp from James T. Singer on May 14, 2004. “The resurrection.” He fanned through the stack of financial statements. “Looks like Charlotte took over, and two summers later, the camp broke even again. By 2007, it turned its first profit since…” He checked. “…1998.”

  “Still no mention of Bruce?”

  “Nada.”

  “That’s where the trail runs cold, then.” Brynn slapped a folder on the floor and massaged the crooks of her eyes.

  “No write-ups on the Charlotte years?”

  “Maybe in her office. Doesn’t matter. I was hoping he’d pop up earlier.”

  Scott pictured the shelves in Charlotte’s office where issues of Fast Company and a few lesser-known rags were displayed like trophies behind her desk. He nodded.

  “So this is all we’ve got.” Brynn waved Bruce’s W-4. “Bruce Bergman. 35 Wallington Avenue, Great Falls, Montana. Single.” She crushed the paper and threw it across the room. “While he’s got my sister.”

  She hugged her legs and curled into a ball with her forehead planted on her knees. Scott contemplated touching her shoulder—perhaps offering a back rub—but decided against it. Less than four and a half days until the bus shows up. God help us get through four more days.

  The rain, which had been tapping on the playroom’s windows all night, began to fade. Outside the sky lightened, and the trees became visible as the horizon cycled from black to navy to indigo.

  “It’s my fault,” Brynn said out of nowhere. “All of it.”

  “She’s going to be fine,” Scott replied. He didn’t know if he believed it, but he said so anyway. Screw it, he thought, and he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Stephanie’s going to be fine.”

  Brynn shriveled away from the touch. “N-No,” she stammered. “You don’t get it. It’s my fault. It’s always been my f-fault. I’m the reason our family’s not together anymore. Me. And now I’m the one who left her to d-die with that—that demon.”

  She squeezed her sides and dug her nails into her ribs, clawing the burn marks that Scott knew were beneath her uniform.

  “Listen,” he said. “Everybody’s got shit in their past, all right? It sucks, but we’ve gotta push it aside so we can focus on finding her. Trust me. Push it aside.”

  “What if you’ve tried but can’t?”

  Brynn’s voice was hushed. Frightened. Scott knew from personal experience that she was more afraid of the horrors inside her head—what she was imagining (or worse, remembering)—than the ones on the outside.

  I don’t know.

  Brynn looked out the window and watched the sky swirl from indigo to periwinkle to the faintest streaks of orange. How long the two of them remained silent, Scott wasn’t sure. Half a minute,
a minute, two minutes. Finally, without taking her eyes off the clouds, Brynn said, “‘Dreamhouse hellfire engulfs neighborhood.’” Her voice was flat with no trace of a stutter. “That’s the headline the paper chose. What a shining example of the finest small-town shit journalism in the world.”

  Brynn wiped her nose on her arm. Scott didn’t say anything; he let the silence draw the words out.

  “It was my favorite toy. The Dreamhouse. And I burned it. I knew I could reach the matches if I stood on Dad’s chair, and I thought, ‘Barbie’s oven needs heat.’ But when I saw the smoke curl through the plastic stove, I panicked and ran upstairs. The basement was gone by the time it came through the vents in the bedroom where Mom was napping. Who knows where the neighbors were when the flames latched on to their house? Maybe their five-year-old was playing with her Dreamhouse too? We used to be friends, but I never saw her again. And no one even blamed me for it. No reform school, no court case beyond the civil suit. That headline should’ve said ‘Daughter disintegrates family home,’ but instead it said ‘hellfire.’ Hellfire. Like all I did was open the door when the devil came knocking. That disaster has always been my fault, and now it’s happening again.”

  Scott remained quiet. He had no response, no words of comfort. He looked out the playroom’s window and watched the morning sunlight strike the tips of the birch trees with flagrant oranges and flickering red-yellow hues. Brynn glanced at the sky one more time and then buried her face in her arms.

  Outside, the horizon continued to burn.

  20

  When Tyrell asked if there was going to be breakfast, Scott sniffed and said, “Not unless you brought the bacon and eggs, pal.” But if you happen to find some, he thought, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, we could fry them up on these window ledges in no time flat—bon appétit.

  It was 9:00 a.m. and the day was already hotter than a Tijuana Rolex. Thankfully, the storm had blessed their mop buckets and garbage cans with a few inches of rainwater, and with any luck, that would be enough to last them until Friday. If it doesn’t, Scott wagered, it should bring us damn close.

  “Mamer. Out you get.”

  He turned and saw his least favorite person in the fort, Lance Thompson, lumbering into the ballroom. The douche bag had a shit-eating grin on his face, as though nothing satisfied him more than banishing Scott to lookout duty.

  As the two of them crossed paths, it took all of Scott’s willpower not to punch the dumb-fuck in the gut. Ever since Charlotte had revealed the handwritten letter from Bruce—the one addressed to “Scott + Company”—Lance and Denisha had said fewer than ten words to him. Their eyes communicated everything: “Why would that monster mention you by name? Are you the reason this is happening? Can anyone trust you?”

  “Think whatever you want,” Scott muttered, making his way out of the ballroom, down the hall, and up the staircase to the fort’s roof. He burst through the door—blinded by a flash of sunlight—and tilted his head to the sky, reveling in the fresh breeze.

  A second later, his nostrils twitched.

  What the hell is that?

  He looked around, and it didn’t take long to spot the source of the rancid stench. A yellow mop bucket was parked against the eastern parapets with rolls of toilet paper stacked on either side. Since leaving the fort was now forbidden, Norma’s once-upon-a-time shit-pail suggestion had become an unfortunate reality. Maybe I’d rather be back in the ballroom, he reconsidered. At least there you only have to put up with figurative shit.

  He turned his back on the bucket and leaned over the wall, getting his first glimpse at the camp since the sun had risen.

  A string of butterflies bobbed across the main lawn, one behind the other, playing an insouciant game of follow-the-leader. To the left, the treetops rustled as a marten zipped from branch to branch, and to the right, a goose washed herself in the Seven Dwarfs fountain while her goslings poked their heads in the abandoned streets of Storybook Square. The clearing belonged to the wildlife now. And Bruce. He’s down there somewhere, the nutcase. Scott wished he could reach out and pick up the buildings like plastic cups in a carnival game, revealing which one the rat was lurking underneath.

  He took in another breath of piss-scented air and began contemplating how many limbs he would sacrifice for a single cigarette.

  “The bears impaled her.”

  Brynn’s words arrived out of nowhere.

  Scott shuddered. He was afraid of squinting closer at the camp and discovering a body flopped over the spire of the zip-line tower, or—God forbid—spotting Mai, Roddy, Nikki, and Cynthia hanging like corpses in makeshift gallows. Was smoke wafting up from anywhere? No. How about the fleshy thump-thump-thump of someone being beaten with an iron rod?

  In all likelihood, he’s killed them by now. The question is how?

  He shielded his eyes and peered deeper into the clearing. To the east, the corral was empty except for the mares and geldings. The archery range appeared vacant too—no one bound to the targets with arrows sticking out of their bodies like needles in a pincushion—and in the west, the hedge maze swayed harmlessly in the wind. Nothing suspicious stirred by the huts, either, nor by the fire pit.

  No, he corrected himself. The question isn’t how. The question is why.

  He pictured Cynthia and Nikki first. Shiny lip-gloss, denim short shorts, butterfly tramp stamps. Fairy tales don’t bode well for strippers, do they? Ten-to-one their fates had something to do with lust. But what about Roddy? He liked to joke around and brag a lot, I guess. Is that all? And Mai? I hardly knew her. No one did. What did she ever do that was bad enough to sign her death warrant?

  A fresh breeze blew by and cooled his forehead. He spit over the parapet and wiped his mouth.

  Time passed, but there was no clock on the roof, so he didn’t know how long his shift had lasted. He paced back and forth trying to recall more fairy tales, but the longer he racked his brain, the louder a voice inside of him said, You’re as clueless as a cow at a slaughterhouse. Find Brynn. She’s smarter than you; maybe she’s discovered something by now. He doubted it, but he figured he might as well check. Right after a quick piss, that is.

  Scott approached the mop pail and unzipped his fly, about to take a leak, when he saw a six-inch log floating in the bucket. Lance. He grimaced—now understanding the grin the asshole had given him—and relieved himself anyway, then dumped the bucket over the wall and ducked into the fort. As he descended the stairwell, he wished for his pack of Marlboros again, savoring the imaginary flavor, and maybe—here he had to be careful not to let such wild fantasies run away with him—maybe a piece of toast and a cup of coffee to wash it down.

  ____

  Brynn’s luck wasn’t much better. She’d been combing through the fables with bloodshot eyes since the sun had risen, having not gotten up—not even for the bathroom bucket—in hours.

  “I had no idea there were so many,” she told Scott with a heavy sigh, “let alone how graphic they are. Look at this: ‘The Story of the Thumbsucker.’ It’s about a psychotic tailor who cuts off children’s thumbs with giant scissors.”

  “I don’t remember Roddy sucking his thumb,” Scott said, “so he’s safe there.”

  “Or this one. ‘The Girl Without Hands.’ A father saws off his daughter’s hands when she refuses to sleep with him.”

  “Now you’re joking.”

  “Yeah,” Brynn said, deadpan. “Yeah, I thought this was a good time to practice my comedy routine.”

  “Easy. I get it. These Grimms were fucked up.”

  “It’s not just the German stuff. Some of it’s French, some’s Danish, some’s Norwegian. A lot of the stories reference older works too, and there’s a crapload of footnotes and appendices. Reads more like a fairy-tale compendium than a Brothers Grimm omnibus.”

  Compendi-omni-huh?

  “Listen,” Scott said, “why don’t you take the lookout shift? Leave some reading to me and I’ll fill you in.”

  She hes
itated. “If you find anything—”

  “I’ll come straight up. Promise.”

  He reached down and took the book out of her lap. She flinched but let it go, and a moment later, she was off the floor and moving for the door.

  “Scott,” she said, pausing at the edge of the room.

  “Hmm?”

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded, and then she was gone.

  The book was a beast—almost five hundred pages—but he managed to skim through most of it without much trouble. It helped, of course, that Brynn had left sticky notes with SparkNotes-like summaries in the margins. “The Juniper Tree,” for instance: “Stepmother beheads boy for trying to steal apple, turns him into sausages.”

  “Ugh.” He shivered and flipped twenty pages ahead.

  “‘The Twelve Wild Ducks.’ Queen throws infant into snake pit and smears second queen with blood to convince king she ate it.”

  Flip—another twenty pages. “‘The Story of the Soup-Kaspar,’” he muttered. “‘Kaspar, little boy, refuses to eat soup. Lasts five days, then starves to death.’” He changed gears and flipped backward. “‘The Little Mermaid,’ Hans Christian Anderson.” Here’s one I know. But even “The Little Mermaid” contained tons of gruesome content that he wasn’t familiar with. Among the more gory details, the original tale claimed that the Sea Witch’s potion made every step the mermaid took excruciatingly painful, as though she were walking on knives (or swords, as one footnote explicated). In the end, the prince married a temple girl, and when the Little Mermaid’s heart was broken, her sisters brought her a knife and told her to kill the prince and pour his blood over her feet in order to become a mermaid again. She refused and committed suicide by tossing herself into the ocean—at least, as far as Scott could tell. There was something about transforming into a “Daughter of Air” and rising into the Kingdom of God, too, but that part flew way over his head.

  He flipped to the next story and scanned the sticky note.

  “‘The Three Little Men in the Woods.’ Part one: Evil stepmother sends beautiful stepdaughter into the woods. Beautiful stepdaughter meets three gnomes who grant her three wishes. Part two: Ugly stepsister finds three gnomes and receives three curses. Part three: King discovers stepmother trying to kill stepdaughter and orders guards to toss her into a barrel of nails and roll it into the river. Fin.”