The Gretel Series: Books 1-3 (Gretel Series Boxed set)

by Coleman, Christopher

  Instead, look for a man here, Gretel.

  I spot the sentence on the backside of a sheet at the very top of the page, and I flip it to the front for context.

  If you ever return to the Old World—and I implore you to do this, there lies your heritage, as you already know—and if during your time there you ever need help or feel threatened by the darkness of the place, don’t seek our kin. KEEP AWAY FROM THE AULWURMS. Some of them are kind, helpful, but I see now, looking back at our time there, that those who knew our family’s history held a fear on their faces. A fear at the very name of our descendants.

  Instead, look for a man here, Gretel. A man called Noah.

  My mother’s letter generally addresses both Gretel and I, but in certain places, usually as it pertains to specific advice, it individualizes, as in this case.

  He is a guide, well-educated, and speaks many languages, though this last quality may not be generally known of him. You may remember his name from my story. He was my guide through the mountains during the time you and Hansel returned to the Back Country alone. Ask for him at the travel office in Hecklin—that was the name of the town where we stayed during our months living there. Remember? I do. I remember those times fondly. Often, I wish we could return...

  I force myself to look away for fear of being drawn back into to another hour of reading. The letter is captivating that way, and many a day over the past few years has been lost in those pages.

  I think Gretel felt the same way about it, but she never wanted it as her possession, even after Anika’s death. She had read it often, I presume, but when it came to ownership of it, she always thought I should have it. That I would be the better keeper, the better preserver of our mother’s memory. I think it was more than that though. Gretel had Orphism as her safety text, the copy passed down to her from Deda, and she wanted me to have my own words to cling to.

  Did she remember this detail of the letter though, this part about Noah?

  Of course, it may be a mistake to presume Maja’s Noah is the same man mentioned in my mother’s letter, but if my life around Gretel has taught me anything, it’s that there are very few coincidences in this world.

  I fold up my mother’s letter carefully and place it back into the water-tight sleeve; I have no doubt I’ll be referencing it later. I then pick up Gretel’s letter and stare at it, cringing at the text. For all the care and lengthy meticulousness with which my mother wrote her letter, Gretel’s is the opposite. It’s a one paragraph scribbling of hurried distress, erratic and sloppy, as if written in the midst of sinking ship.

  Hansel-

  I’m writing in fear, though not immediate danger. I’m still in the Old World and have recently moved to a town called Stedwick Village. It’s remote, but friendly. There’s a man called Gromus. Some think of him as myth, but he is known by others. He’s been in my dreams. He’s after me. I’m sure of it. I will send another letter a day or two following this. If you don’t receive it, something’s happened to me. I wish I was with you. I wish I could overcome the feelings of the Back Country. How is Petr? And Mrs. Klahr? You did the right thing, Hansel. She was declining.

  I love you. -Gretel

  Declining. That was one word for it. I could probably think of a dozen others to describe my mother’s transformation into the monster she became, but ‘declining’ was as appropriate as any. It’s been a long day though, and I decide to leave those particular memories for another night, preferably one when whiskey and time are both freely available.

  I ache for a drink now, and I consider making my way back to the main street of the village in search of a tavern. It’s not the best idea considering I’ve got a daybreak start tomorrow, but the edges are digging in sharp right now.

  My flask. I fumble it from my bag and shake it twice, gauging to have about three swallows remaining. I step outside to the miniature landing at the top of the staircase and stare out toward the street with the flask in one hand and Gretel’s letter in the other. Her second letter had never come, of course, but even if it had, I probably would have ended up in this village anyway. There was a fear in my sister’s writing that I’d never heard her speak aloud. She was always the stronger one, always the level-headed thinker and solver of our problems, so her words were particularly disturbing and scared me in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a kid during those first few weeks after my mother had vanished from the Interways. I could never have simply left Gretel alone in this land, thousands of miles from her home. There were too many questions. How did Gretel know Gromus, for instance? Was it strictly from her dreams? Her letter wasn’t clear on that part, but she must have had some contact with him to know his name. And clearly she had asked some of the locals about the man, how else would she have known that he was thought to be a myth?

  Unless her power of intuition had grown to that level of detail. Was that possible? I remember from my mother’s horror story that Marlene had guessed a name very similar to ‘Anika’ during their first interaction, without knowing anything about her. Perhaps Gretel had reached this level through her practice of Orphism.

  The flood of concern fills my head now, but I fight the allure to venture into town. I take a nip of scotch and then breathe a full gasp of air into my lungs before retreating back to my room. The mattress here is small and thin, and what little cushioning it contains has all retreated to the fringes. But I fall asleep instantly, and the nightmare continues.

  Chapter 8

  I opened the door to my mother’s room with the care of an eye surgeon, but the squeal of the hinges sounded as loud as a plate shattering on a ceramic floor. My mother didn’t stir. She lay on her side, facing away from me toward the window.

  “Mother?” I mouthed, letting a tiny breath of air barely sound out the word.

  Still not a quiver from the bed.

  I stepped toward the closet and pushed apart the sliding panel doors, which glided silently to their respective ends. I was greeted by a lineup of moth-ridden blouses and sweaters, the dust on them visible even in the darkness of the wardrobe. I covered my mouth and slid my arm between two jackets, moving them apart. At first, I could see only a pile of scarves and a crusty pair of boots below me, the latter of which was almost entirely enveloped in the white death wrap of cobwebs. I let the clothing drop back into place and had started to slide the doors closed when I saw it. A small box, ornately hinged, at one time serving as my mother’s jewelry box, but these days housing something much less decorative than the imitation gems my mother wore only on the most special of occasions. Those gems had been sold during another lifetime, and the money was long spent.

  I unlatched the clasps of the box and lifted the lid. The necklace was the only item resting against the velvet floor of the box, snaking from one side to the other, the brown tips of the giant teeth pushing against the walls of the case as if trying to escape.

  Marlene’s teeth.

  Gretel and I never knew why she extracted the teeth that day. The shotgun pellets that both Anika and Gretel discharged had left Marlene’s face well beyond recognizable, so much so that we later found slabs of skull on the roof of our house. Despite my best efforts, I had vomited on the crime scene, adding to the grotesqueness of the Morgan driveway that day.

  But even with the destruction from the blast, impossibly, many of the witch’s absurdly large teeth had remained intact. And, as Petr noted at the time, they had seemed even larger after the rest of her face had disintegrated in a sea of lead and gunpowder.

  My mother had stood staring at the woman for a few beats that day, unblinking and emotionless, and then, as if given a silent cue from somewhere in the forest, she had walked silently, quickly, to the back of the house and the wooden tool shed. Moments later she had returned with a pair of large pliers and a hammer and proceeded to pull out every one of the teeth that remained in Marlene’s mouth. When she was done with her primitive operation, the witch’s face had turned to a shapeless pile of flesh, a festering pomegranate squashed i
nto the gravel.

  I had watched in sickening fascination that day, so flooded with emotions and amazement at my mother and her strength. She had returned for us, ravaged with sickness and exhaustion, and had saved Gretel, Petr and I from certain death at the hands of Marlene. So this gruesome post-mortem act, which in retrospect seemed bizarre and vicious, was understandable to me at the time. It was to Gretel too, I think. We both tacitly chalked the demonstration up as nothing more than an out-of-body reaction—an impromptu ritual brought upon by a volatile mix of adrenaline and anger.

  But then a necklace had surfaced.

  It was weeks later when we first saw it. It was a day or two after Gretel had given our mother the first dose of the potion and Anika had begun the treatment for her mysterious disease.

  It was the beginning stage of her decline.

  Gretel and I had said nothing that first time, or the second or third time, but we both knew it was not a good indicator of her condition that she was wearing a necklace made from the teeth of the woman that had tortured her and whom she’d ultimately helped kill. But we also understood she had been through more than either of us, so it seemed reasonable that she needed to recover in her own way.

  It wasn’t until Petr had asked her about the necklace explicitly that we knew there was something more to it.

  My mother had made her way back to the house that morning, slowly ascending the railroad ties that led up to the house from the lake. Once her recovery was underway, she had taken up the practice of beginning every day sitting on the bank of the lake, either standing and staring out into the water, or sitting cross-legged in a pose of meditation. The meditation never bothered me—in fact, I found it peaceful to watch her on those mornings—but the standing and staring, that was something different.

  Gretel and I had never asked what she was doing exactly, and we certainly never disturbed her. It had become my mother’s daily routine, without exception, and we let it rest as it was.

  “Are those the witch’s teeth?” Petr asked.

  Petr Stenson had also changed after that day on the driveway. The experience with Marlene had turned the shy boy who was full of deference and smiles into a hardened stoic, pragmatic and truth-seeking.

  At the boy’s question, Anika had instantly reached for the necklace with the tips of her fingers, and then, embarrassed by her reflex, clasped her hands together in front of her at her waist and smiled. She then cleared her throat. “Do you think it strange, Petr?”

  Petr had looked at Gretel and then to me, relapsing for a moment into the old Petr, searching for a bailout, hoping we’d provide an answer that we didn’t possess. But he had composed himself quickly and looked back at Anika, nodding. “I do,” he said. This was the answer of the new Petr.

  “Of course you do. Just as I would in your position.” My mother had then softened her eyes on Petr and waved the three of us closer into a huddle. “It is so I never forget.”

  Petr stayed steely with his expression, eyes as cold as morning frost, contradicting the words that followed. “I love you Mrs. Morgan—I love all of you—but I don’t need a necklace as a reminder. Or anything else. I will never forget that woman for as long as I live.”

  My mother had smiled at Petr again, and it was a smile I have never quite forgotten. It may have been the last genuine smile of Anika Morgan’s life, the last smile that didn’t seek to manipulate or condescend. “I know that feels true to you. But you might be surprised at how quickly the mind recovers. I don’t think I’ll forget either, Petr, but I don’t want to take a chance.”

  She had worn the necklace for quite some time after that, never commenting on it, but never hiding it either. And then one day it was gone. I had asked her about it, but my mother only said she was retiring it. That she no longer needed it because she had found the answers. The potion was all she needed now; the teeth had simply become a symbol.

  I wasn’t sure what that meant—then or now—but there was something I was sure of: I wanted the necklace for myself. I wasn’t sure why at the time, but I knew there was something useful to be gained from its possession, something, perhaps, to harness for the future.

  As I stood in front of the open closet with my mother sleeping behind me, I held the necklace up in front of my face and stood straight up, the white ivory of the teeth shining against the black backdrop of the closet. The instinct to put it around my neck, to adorn it as my mother did, was strong, but I resisted. Instead, I just brought it closer to my face, squinting my eyes, trying to make out every serration and fissure and cavity of the dangling fangs.

  I shook myself from the necklace’s absorption, turning my eyes from it as I gathered it in a coil in my palm. I kneeled to put it back in the box when I heard the creak of the bed behind me. I froze in mid-stoop, hoping the sound was just my mother settling, rolling to her other side. It was what I told myself, but to my ears the sound was more deliberate. I closed my eyes for a moment as I stood up straight again, and when I opened them, I could see a shadow slide across the floor beneath me and begin to climb over the hanging clothes of the open closet. The black outline stopped for a beat, resting at the height of the hangers, and then rose further to the wooden beams above the molding.

  She was awake now, and I could feel her watching me.

  I forced myself to turn toward the bed, telling myself to breathe no matter what I saw behind me. I was still holding the necklace, but I had dropped my hands to my sides now, and as I spun a hundred and eighty degrees, I saw my mother standing on the bed. Her back was as straight as a pencil, her legs slightly apart and her arms by her sides with her head collapsed forward, chin on chest. She looked asleep from the neck up, but the rest of her looked as attentive as a freshly branded bull.

  “Mother,” I said, just above a whisper. “Are you okay?”

  Anika pivoted her left foot and turned toward the window. She paused there a moment, and then took two steps across the mattress before, on her third step, plunged the eighteen inches or so off the bed, thudding to the floor with a clumsy bounce, but ultimately keeping her balance. Her head and hair shook violently from the impact, but her chin never moved from her chest.

  “Mother,” I repeated, the fear inside me starting to well beyond a point of containment, the lump in my throat nearly constricting me. I could have run, escaped to the safety of the forest and the Klahr’s across the lake, and in the morning, even if my mother woke up on the porch or in the bathtub, she wouldn’t have remembered anything about any of it.

  But I was mesmerized by what I was witnessing, even if it meant the next phase of my ruined life was underway. The transformation of Anika Morgan had begun weeks before, and this was simply the latest manifestation.

  She began to walk toward me, sliding her feet across the wooden floor; the sound, benign and insignificant in any other setting, was as terrifying as any I’d ever heard. The soft scraping of her soles seemed destined to consume me.

  As she neared me, now only a few feet away, I could see through the fallen hair to her face. Her eyes were open, glazed and distant, but at the same time watching.

  “Mother!” I screamed. I made no play to hide my desperation now, recognizing that if her intentions were to harm me, it was too late to do anything but protect myself.

  But her movements never became aggressive, so I waited, willing to let her land the first blow of attack if that was what was coming. Instead, she stopped about six inches from me, her toes directly in line with my feet, and then she lifted her head. As she did, her hair receded enough that I could see that her eyes were now closed. She reached her right hand toward mine, a gentle motion, that of a lover or sympathetic friend, and placed the grasp of her fingers across the top of my hand, the one holding the necklace.

  “It’s yours,” she said. “Take it. Never forget us.”

  Chapter 9

  I leave the grounds of the hotel and retrace my steps through the alley back towards Maja and Kacper’s store. The plan was for Maja to meet
me outside of Cezar’s hotel, but dawn is still a couple of hours away, and what sleep I was able to capture has quickly turned to restlessness and anxiety. It’s been a long time since I turned in for the night completely sober, and my clear head has turned against me.

  When I reach the first curb of Stedwick’s main avenue, I turn in the opposite direction of the store and head down the street which appears to be lined with a mixture of both residences and stores. There’s not likely to be a bar open at this hour, and that’s not the thrust of my stroll, but I keep one eye reserved for the telltale lights just in case.

  The street is empty and the night air brings a chill to my shoulders, but the cold keeps my mind off drinking and turns it toward Gretel and Gromus. I’ll need a weapon, something other than the blade I always carry with me in my rucksack, and I’ll have to set my expectations of Maja early on. I promised her father not to put her in danger, so as soon as she takes me to Noah, I will insist she head back home. Or perhaps the whole idea of her coming is a bad one. I could leave now, write a note of thanks and apologies and set it on the bed of the room where Cezar would find it.

  I walk a few blocks further, sorting out more of these pre-trip decisions, when a voice hits me the moment I cross into the sphere of light from a lamppost above.

  “It’s a bit late for a stroll, no?”

  I recognize instantly that it’s Maja, and I stop, giving a half-glance over my shoulder. “Or perhaps it’s just very early.”

  “Yes, that could be it too.”

  I turn and face Maja, and see now that she has a full-size pack strapped to her back and is wearing the hearty dress of a traveler. “You weren’t planning to leave without me?”