Grimm and Grimmer Volume Two

by Matthew Sylvester

  ***

  On the third and final day the private detective met him in a coffee shop in Holborn and played him a tape from an unnamed movie star’s answering machine.

  'That boy is a no one.

  how dead amaze and totes emosh

  that no ISP and no forum knows

  My name is Rumpeltrollskin.'

  When the boy heard this he was very happy, paid the man cash inside a brown envelope and waited for Rumpeltrollskin to ask his question one last time.

  The message was waiting for him when he got home, What’s my name? It included an attachment showing how he should deliver his child so that no one would ever find him again.

  The boy wrote, 'You are called Rumpeltrollskin and you are an advisor to the Queen. I know where you live and I will expose you for the evil fraud you are if you ever contact me again.'

  Curse you, came the response, for years I have had each of my ideas scorned by the queen, nor am I handsome or charming and so TV producers have never even offered me so much as my own segment.

  The boy had no pity, 'You wanted my child for the darkest of reasons. You shall not have him. Do not ever speak to me again.'

  The advisor left the show, and the country, almost immediately and was never heard of again. The boy loved his child and kept secret the nature of his deal with Rumpeltrollskin until the day he died.

  The End

  Jennifer Loring

  Jennifer Loring has published numerous short stories and poems in magazines, webzines and anthologies, and received an honourable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror for her story “The Bombay Trash Service.” Currently Jennifer is working toward an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction and is a staff writer for HorrorNews.net. She has recently completed her first novel, Those of My Kind. Jennifer is a member of YALITCHAT and the Horror Writers Association (HWA), and has served as a content and developmental editor with Musa Publishing's YA imprint, Euterpe. As an avid gamer, she wrote reviews and articles for the Cemetery Dance newsletter and Australian webzine The Go. Jennifer lives in Philadelphia, PA, with her boyfriend and their turtle named—what else?—Ninja.

  Here are some thoughts on Jenn's inspiration: 'One Hundred Lost Years' was inspired by "Sleeping Beauty" and, to a lesser extent, 'Rapunzel.' "It is my second retelling of 'Sleeping Beauty', and while I used more of the details from the original Italian version, this time I wanted to make the main character much more sinister. I imagined that the only way a young woman would be condemned to eternal sleep and locked away in a tower was if she were something not altogether human... "

  One Hundred Lost Years

  by Jennifer Loring

  She was the most beautiful woman into whom life had ever been breathed, or she bore tusks for teeth and scales for skin. Her hair was a luxurious sable mane, or it was a nest of writhing and poisonous snakes. She was locked in a tower either because of the constant threats to her virtue, or because to look upon her was to know horror in its purest form. When she pricked her finger while sewing a dress—what princess sewed her own dresses!—and fell into a deathlike slumber, her revenge (for she was a witch, of course) blighted the land and its people for eternity. The fields of pale blue flowers, once famous for flax crops providing the most superb linens on the continent, shriveled and turned brown. A strange briarwood sprouted up around the borders of the kingdom, fencing in whatever terrible fate had befallen it. At once all those trapped behind the briar turned to stone and, plagued by wind and rain, they crumbled away into dust.

  No one knew if the tale held even one shred of truth, so attempts to breach the tower in which the princess carried out her alleged curse became something of a rite of passage for noblemen in the neighboring territories. Most proved themselves cowards and, confronted by the difficulties of navigating the dark thicket, refused to go further. Always adventurous of heart, Prince Antonio attended several of these abandoned expeditions with mounting disappointment until, one cloudless spring morning, he decided to lead a party of his own.

  They did not expect to be away for long, a day or two at most. Antonio expected to find a land ravaged by insects or famine or disease, but no people turned to stone, and certainly no princess in a tower. A village lay at the wood’s edge on the periphery of his own kingdom, where the prince arranged to stable the horses until the party returned. The stable master’s wife ran a small inn and pub. Antonio bought pints of ale for his men, and they sat at the bar while she scrubbed the aged wood. Her hands were rough and red, the hands of one forced to scratch out a living by any means necessary in a place seldom traveled anymore.

  'What brings you this way?' she asked. She looked old enough that her grandparents would have known the village in its heyday, when the flax and linen trade brought it great prosperity. But a century had passed since the mysterious affliction, and merchants forced to find other linen providers altered their trade routes.

  'We have business at the tower.'

  She laughed. The teeth not already missing were brown. 'Business at the tower? No, you haven’t. Every now and then a group of young fools like yourselves come along, think they’re going to get in. Most find the sense to turn back. The ones that don’t, well…damned if I ever see them again. Still got their horses here if you don’t believe me. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we sell one or two of them.'

  'I am a prince, lady, and you’ll kindly not insult me.'

  'Then listen closely, Your Highness.' The woman threw her rag down on the bar and wiped her hands on her apron. 'For all we have suffered out here since the kingdom’s demise, it was a blessing when the sleep fell upon them. I don’t care who you are—if you intend to wake her, or any of them, for that matter, you’ll kindly remove yourself from my inn.'

  The rest of the men fell silent. Antonio ignored her impertinent tone, for he had too many questions to risk angering her further. 'She was just a girl, if she even existed at all. What could she have done?'

  'Retribution wasn’t enough for her mother; she will consume everything. Nothing must live there. Now leave it alone.'

  Leave it alone? He almost believed she enjoyed teasing him with this information. 'Retribution for what? I must know.'

  The woman shook her head. 'Young man, do yourself a favour and go home. Please. Let us live out our lives in peace.'

  The prince tossed several gold coins, far more than the cost of their ale, onto the bar. 'For your troubles, lady. I’ll see to it I do not bring you more.'

  'Your Highness,' she said, scooping the coins into her pocket. She did not look at him again.

  ***

  Prince Antonio entered the briarwood first, both as a display of bravery and to locate some suggestion of a path. The gnarled, clawed vines of the thicket closed in on all sides. Perhaps it was a trick of fevered imaginations, remnants of childhood nightmares sculpted by tales of the enchanted wood. Plants possessed no such abilities, and magic was only so much superstitious drivel. But here only the roses possessed color, as if they had drained it from their surroundings.

  'You heard that woman,' said one of the men. 'You know the stories. This place…it’s haunted, or worse.'

  'Afraid of a little girl, are you? If you’re frightened, go home.'

  The man grumbled to himself but walked onward behind the rest of the party.

  Crepuscular shadows descended upon the wood, and the chirp of insectile music filled the air. The prince was certain it had been midday just moments ago. Before them and behind them were trees and roses, an endless labyrinthine path twisting into nothing but more trees, and more roses.

  'It’s dark, and we’re hungry,' said his valet, Sergio, holding up the small satchel of cheeses and smoked meats he’d brought along. 'Let us at least make camp for a while. We can’t go any further like this.'

  'Go home, then. If you all intend to do nothing but complain, I will carry on by myself.'

  The ground beneath them let out a malevolent hiss as a rose briar ensnared Sergio’s ankle. The prince drew his sw
ord, but Sergio hadn’t hit the ground before another thorny tentacle grasped the man beside him. One by one they fell around Antonio, who hacked futilely at the serpentine plants. The men clawed frantically at the hard and unyielding earth, but the more they struggled, the tighter the vines squeezed. Fingernails shattered and bled; green teeth disguised as thorns sank into the flesh of the men’s calves and thighs. The prince watched in impotent horror, for his sword had barely nicked the outer skin of the vines. Sergio stretched out his hand, his fingertips just brushing Antonio’s, before the briars jerked him away and dragged the men into the darkness of the wood.

  'Help us!' Antonio cried to no one but the gray and shriveled trees. When only the distant shrieks of his men answered he ran, directionless, for the compass was gone. He slashed at the vines around him, his breath burning in his lungs and his throat. His arms and legs, even his face, bled from thorn scratches.

  Just yards ahead the trees broke at last. He prayed that he would see his own kingdom, but the clearing opened instead onto a desolate and unfamiliar countryside. Leaden clouds hung from the sky, and everything as far as he could see, all but the roses, was dead.

  The tower, stark white against an ever-blackening sky, stood upon a hill. Where it was not festooned with bleached skulls and other bones, where the rose briars did not entwine it in a lover’s embrace, its stone surface was completely smooth, unblemished by a door. Massive black clouds enrobed its peak. It might go on forever, for all he knew. As he pulled a skull out of the thorns to examine it, vampiric barbs pricked his palms in search of more blood. Every last skull was human; the briar seemed to find things like stray animals beneath its attention. But all the animals, too, were said to be dead. Perhaps they’d had the sense to at least stay away from the tower.

  Antonio tossed the skull back into the bramble, which covered not only the tower but the gatehouse, the turrets, and the walls. Not a single breath of wind stirred the few dead leaves still clinging with inexplicable persistence to the trees.

  He drew his sword and slashed at the vines where the portcullis ought to be. This thicket did not resist as the briarwood had. Grayish-brown tentacles dropped from the gatehouse onto the withered grass, along with rose petals resembling fat dribs of blood. His fingers throbbed, and sweat stung the wounds on his hands like tiny wasps. At last the briars fell away to reveal the wooden portcullis, half-open already. Antonio stooped and walked beneath it into the shadowy gatehouse. The air here was stale and difficult to breathe; a long-sealed tomb. Formless shapes that might have been food sacks or something more sinister lined the walls. He pushed on the castle door, which glided open without even a creak.

  'Gods,' he whispered, and nearly lost his grip on the sword.

  In the great hall the castle’s inhabitants had gathered for dinner. The king and his family at the high table, the knights and the rest of the household at trestle tables below, upon which lay dishes of larks, smoked fish, cheeses and butter, and goblets of ale. Milky eyes stared at food their reaching hands would never grasp, each gray body adorned in layers of dust and silvery cobwebs like unraveled silken threads. Even the flies on the walls had descended into slumber. The spiders, too, should have found succulent prey in these fat insects but fell to napping upon the diners whose shrouds they wove. He knelt before the fireplace. A spit that had long ceased to rotate held a large lamb shank. The crystalline flames were cold to the touch, and glimmered like stained glass catching the last rays of sunlight. These too had all gone to sleep.

  They had got it all wrong, those stories. Perhaps there is not even a princess.

  He picked his way between the tables of mummified men and women and wandered into the kitchen. A cook with a raised wooden spoon in one hand grasped his assistant by the collar. Scullery maids hunched over the floor, arms stretched out in mid-scrub, the water like mirrors inlaid over the stone. The kitchen maid sat on a stool with a plump chicken on her lap, fingers poised to pluck its feathers. Antonio touched the skin of each figure and found it as cold as the ocean. No nudge or prod roused these statues from whatever malevolence had befallen them. A deathly silence saturated the castle, the atmosphere leaden with the weight of one hundred lost years.

  In the back of the kitchen a small doorway revealed a staircase, unlit by the torpid flames of the torches in the great hall and kitchen. He took a hesitant step into the darkness, hands pressed against the cold stone walls on either side. Antonio looked up. Nothing lay above him but more shadows.

  If I stay too long, I shall become like them.

  He pushed the thought out of his head, though already his legs tired and the lethargic sag of his eyelids urged him to find a spare room in which to rest. That, he assured himself, could just as easily be the result of his journey and the loss of his men, coupled with an overactive imagination.

  Time once again lost all meaning, as it had in the briarwood. He might have climbed for hours or days through the ceaseless dark, ascending a tower whose summit lay somewhere in the sky. His legs had become as heavy as two full sacks of rice, and before long he was dragging himself up the stairs on his hands and knees. At last he collapsed onto the cold stone of the tower’s single floor. He welcomed the silence, the lack of light, for he wished only to sleep.

  Antonio had nearly drifted into sweet nothingness when he remembered why he had come. His eyes snapped open. He mustn’t forfeit the memory of his men’s lives. Even if there were nothing here at all, he might serve as a warning to other foolish young men.

  I should have listened to the innkeeper. I shall be better than this when I take my father’s throne. I shall be wiser for it.

  He pushed himself up off the floor and groped in the darkness for any depression in the wall that indicated a door. Antonio circled the floor three times, his limbs and eyelids growing ever more leaden, before he found the shallow indent. The texture was only slightly different, and there was no discernible means of actually opening the door. He tried to slide it, first to one side and then the other, to no avail.

  'Aprire la porta!' he shouted. If the door would not respond to physical force, perhaps words might move it.

  It refused to obey him.

  'Patefacio ianua!' Antonio cried out in the ancient tongue. He had run out of ideas and was so tired he began to weep.

  Stone ground against stone. Antonio swept the sleeve of his tunic across his eyes and stepped inside.

  The chamber was larger than he expected but barren of much more than a simple bed at its farthest end. Peculiar blue flames that threw off sparks of silver smoldered in a brazier beside the door. Antonio peered into it; the fire, suspended in the center of the metal box, burned silently by invisible means. Its light did not extend far enough for him to make out the figure lying on the bed. Perhaps he only thought he saw a shape there, the chicanery of shadows toying with his mind. Yes, he was frightened. It was a simple thing to admit now, alone with nothing for company but his terror. What sane man might claim otherwise after witnessing the deaths of his men and the scene in the great hall?

  A book lay open at a lectern before a sealed window. Antonio, fearing the brittle pages would crumble to dust at his touch, did not dare turn them. He read:

  Venio ad meum.

  I call you here,

  Restful night that disappear.

  Sleeplessness I cast into the air,

  So I may rest in slumber’s care.

  Mother, Mother come what may,

  Aid me so I may sleep at bay.

  Mens Agitat Molem. Mens Agitat Molem. Mens Agitat Molem. Mens Agitat Molem. Mens Agitat Molem.

  Upon the window seat rested a man in velvet robes gone gray from the dust of ages, his fingers curled around a quill while the other hand balanced a leather-bound journal. Antonio, after a moment’s deliberation, plucked the journal from him and tucked it into his satchel. If it did not fall apart, he would read it after a good night’s rest. He took a deep breath and crossed the chamber, one hand on his sword hilt. The form in the bed did not
stir. He waited for his eyes to adjust, but once they had, he did not trust what they saw.

  A girl dressed in a yellowed gown of seven skirts, with silver bells sewn along the hem, lay upon the bed. And she was whole - not breathing, not demonstrably alive, but complete nonetheless. Her pink and healthy flesh, her soft and shiny ringlets.

  Her presence snatched away the memory of his men as surely as the forest had stolen their bodies. There was only she, the reason he alone survived the briarwood. Providence had brought him to her. Of all the adventurers forever entangled in the thicket, only he had been found worthy of her discovery.

  The air was heavy with the perfume of roses, a fragranced mist ornamenting the room. He touched the girl’s cheek — warm, silky, yet no breath escaped her lips. 'You are real,' he whispered. Already the prince loved her, this sleeping beauty. He sat beside her on the bed and gathered her rag doll body into his arms. 'Why would anyone do this to you? I would make you my bride.' He kissed her heart-shaped face, and the girl's head rolled back. Antonio set her back upon the bed. If she were truly dead, would she not be stiff and cold? A spell then, just as the stories asserted, just as her household in the castle below. A slumber of a hundred years and beyond, but what would break it? Not a kiss; not a touch.

  Do not awaken what sleeps.

  She did not move, did not so much as flutter her eyelashes, yet he was certain her lips now curved into a slight smile.

  Exhausted by the day’s ordeal, Antonio lay down next to her. He was many things, and had been called many more, but he did not generally take leave of his manners. To sleep beside her was impious at best, and yet he sensed, somehow, she needed him to. He could not resist even if he’d had the strength to fight. Her loneliness, even in her strange sleep, called out for reprieve. He would not callously reject her as her father and her subjects had.