“Thanks!” Chase called out after me with quite a bit of genuine graciousness. But it was really no bother. After all, how many times had Alice’s poor mother cleaned up after one of my midnight snacks? Cherry pits … cookie crumbs … empty glasses of milk … nibbled marble jack cheese … Oh, I could only imagine what the poor woman thought, assuming her daughter was the culprit.
“Can we expect the parents anytime soon?” I called out.
“No,” Chase called back. “They both went into the office for the morning.”
Good, I thought. That meant we would have ample time to discuss all things Corrupted. Hopefully, this newest dream would continue to provide Alice with a distraction from her revenge fantasy against Sam Grayle. Regardless of what haunted her, it would certainly be better than going hunting again.
“Listen. I just want to apologize … for sometimes getting frustrated these past few months.” My rabbit ears picked up Chase’s soft voice with ease. I tossed the two batter-caked skillets into the sink, running the faucet to give them a bit of privacy. But no dice: my hearing was just too good. “It was pretty selfish.”
“I’m just glad you stuck with me,” Alice whispered.
“Me too.”
I finished the dishes, returning to find both of them sitting on the couch, comfortably close. I squatted on the other side of the coffee table, handling my fork like a knife—no thumbs, remember—and stabbing the top pancake on my plate.
“Easy!” Chase said, holding out a hand. “It’s already dead, dude.”
“A good pancake should lift apart,” I explained, holding up the cake. It broke apart between the fork’s prongs, both pieces landing back on the plate. “See how fluffy it is?” I pointed to the soft inside of the broken cake. “This is an excellent pancake, my boy.”
“My ma used to make them all the time,” Chase said. He grabbed the maple syrup, holding it up.
“Hmmmm … yes, if you please,” I said. “More. More now … yes, get the pancake under that, too. Excellent.”
“That’s almost too much,” Alice said, scrunching her face.
“Unlike the two of you, I don’t have to worry about my sugar intake,” I said, stabbing one half of the torn-apart pancake. I squeezed it all into my mouth, sensing just a bit of syrup drool make its way down my chin and land on the Goodenough Family Coffee Table. “Don’t worry about it,” I mumbled. “There’s time to clean up afterward!”
Chase laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so excited about eating.”
I stabbed the other half and sent it to join its brother in my stomach. Alice smiled, then laughed a bit. “You’re all right, rabbit.”
“Exactly what I’ve been saying all along.” I stabbed the second pancake, lifting it up and letting its soft body break apart. “Now! Should we discuss this dream of yours?”
Alice took a deep breath, resting her head on the back of the couch. “It’s an oilfield. I don’t know where.”
I chewed thoughtfully, doing my best to search my brain for any knowledge of oil fields. But the sweet deliciousness of the pancakes and syrup was getting to my head. “A peculiar destination. Not unfamiliar …”
“There’s oil fields in the Middle East,” Chase offered.
“It was definitely dry, but I didn’t see any sand,” Alice said. She shook her head. “It was flat, though. And some of the oil derricks were old and rusted.”
“Russia has some oil fields.” That horrible lurch had returned to my stomach. The oil fields … now I remembered: I’d been to an oilfield before … with Juliette.
“What if he’s in Russia or something?” Chase asked.
Alice sat up, grabbing her glass of orange juice and downing it in two quick gulps. “Then I go to Russia. And I kill him. And then I do it to the next Corrupted. Then the next. Then the next. Then, eventually, I’m replaced.”
Chase and I exchanged a wary glance.
“Well, is there a rush?” I asked, standing and smoothing out my handsome vest. I licked my paw, rubbing the tiny maple syrup stain next to my breast pocket. “Drat! That had better not stain.” A moment of blankness hit my brain. “What were we talking about? Oh, the oil field. What else do we know about this creature?”
“He’s some kind of statue thingy.”
“A statue …” I tapped one paw on my chin, thinking. This was definitely peculiar. Juliette had mentioned a statue creature, too. But she’d killed it. At least, she’d said she’d killed it. That bad feeling was definitely firing off cannons inside the ol’ stomach. “I don’t recall any statues in Grimms’ Fairy Tales.”
“Me neither,” Alice said. “That’s what makes it so weird.”
“Well, we need to know more.” I opened my mouth to continue, but a sudden bout of light-headedness washed over me. “We …” My vision tunneled. I leaned forward. Alice stood up, eyes wide, reaching out to catch me.
Everything went black.
Chapter 8: Chase
The rabbit came to right before bedtime: 11 o’clock. First he mumbled something, then he sat straight up and looked around like a newborn baby. It’d have been cute, I guess, if he’d been a little bunny. But he was a giant rabbit, so it just looked a little weird.
That, and he kept mumbling things about a statue creature.
“Where am I? What happened?” he asked, looking around. His ears were pulled back. That meant he was either mad or suspicious.
“You passed out,” I said. “I’m hoping it’s not a reflection of my cooking skills.”
He blinked a few times. Alice’s desk lamp was on. It was a dull bulb, barely bright enough that I could lie in bed and read her old worn copy of Wide Sargasso Sea. Briar was on the floor next to the window because Alice said that was his favorite spot. He also got both of the squishy pillows because Alice said he needed them.
“What are you doing here?” Briar asked. “Where’s Alice?”
“That’s a funny story,” I said. “See, your invisibility was turning on and off after you passed out. So we couldn’t just leave you downstairs, right? So Alice dragged you upstairs. But then she freaked out because apparently her mom had gotten in the habit of giving her a backrub to help her fall asleep …”
“Lucky girl.”
“Yeah.” I chuckled. “So I volunteered to take her bed tonight and she’s sleeping downstairs. She told her parents that she felt guilty about me always sleeping on the uncomfortable pullout. She figured her mom wouldn’t offer to give me a backrub, which means we probably don’t have to worry about her mom slipping in here tonight and spotting the giant rabbit sleeping under the window.”
Briar stared at me a moment. “Well, if she did?!”
“What? I dunno. I’d throw a blanket over you, I guess.”
“Oh.” He stretched. “I don’t think I’ll be sleeping tonight now. I feel wide awake.”
“Briar, what the heck happened?” I tried to sound as carefree as I possibly could. I used the sort of tone I mastered with my baseball teammates. It’s always hard to talk to a guy after he strikes out. You gotta know how to use the right tone not to tick him off. The last thing I wanted to do was sound suspicious.
“I don’t know,” Briar said. “But …”
An uneasiness hung in the air between us. I didn’t want to say it.
“Don’t worry,” he told me. “I’m incorruptible. I was written so, and so I am.”
“But what if?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself.
His whiskers twitched. “Then I would run away. As far away as possible so that I could never hurt anyone. I would never hurt anyone, Chase. You have to believe me.”
“I do.” But I didn’t. Not entirely. Alice may not see it, but a giant rabbit standing over your bed at night is actually a little creepy. Even if you do know him well. And his mumblings about the statue creature … it was as if he knew it or something.
“Where are you going?” I asked, watching him open the window.
“If I’m going to be up all n
ight, I might as well be useful. Alice said some of the oil derricks were rusted. If it’s in a dry climate, that means the derricks must be incredibly old, since water quickens the rusting process. There must be records in the downtown library that will give me an idea of where the oldest oil derricks are in the United States.”
“Good luck,” I said.
He hopped onto the windowsill. “My boy, I don’t need luck when I have such a fantastic brain.” And with that, he was gone, the sound of his soft feet landing on concrete hitting my ears a second later.
I rested my head on the pillow, thinking. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to mention my morbid worries to Alice. That was the last thing she needed right now. Briar wasn’t becoming Corrupted.
He just couldn’t be.
Chapter 9: Alice
When the shameful deed was done, she said, “Now let us return home, and say that he died on the way. I will extol and praise thee so to my father that he will marry me to thee, and make thee the heir to his crown.” [ii]
I fell asleep while my mom gently rubbed the space between my shoulder blades. It was the last feeling I had before my consciousness began shifting, and I thought if that was the last thing I ever felt, I’d die happy. I remember thinking there would come a time when I could express to my parents just how important they were to me, but that time hadn’t come yet. It had to be perfect.
I wanted to stay in that moment as long as I could, and so I resisted the tug of unconsciousness that was closing in around my vision as I stared at my pillow. I told myself I controlled this, and my battle with the Malevolence proved it. I was in control of these nightmares.
Some unseen force wrenched me back into darkness, into the vast wasteland dotted with oil derricks. My body was ethereal, the cool wind flowing through me. I hated the feeling. I wanted make my body solid. I wanted to flip over so I could gaze up at the millions of stars blanketing the sky instead of watching the oil derricks pass under me.
But I wasn’t in control.
Back to the same rusted oil derrick, the bent finger beckoning me closer with its crumbling steel. I let the force carry me, feeling my body become solid once again, relishing the cool air passing over the skin of my neck instead of passing through me. I know I should have kept my eyes open, tried to take in the scenery, but all I wanted to do was close my eyes and give in.
Give up.
“Open your eyes.”
I did as I was commanded, feeling a hard surface touch my back. My body flinched, as if waking up from a falling dream. I was lying on the concrete floor of the basement in the bunker underneath the broken derrick. To my left was one of the gas pipes, its orange flame flickering ever so slightly as some dark shadow moved into the corner of my vision. I turned, staring at the statue-like Corrupted standing over me.
He took a step forward. One of the metal bolts in his knees snapped, rolling on the floor.
I cringed, half-expecting him to fall right on top of me. But instead, his leg fell away, and another rusted metal leg lifted from one of the shelves to my right, flying through the air and snapping into place.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he said. His voice was deep and scratchy, as if he was chewing on a handful of gravel. “Or …” His stone head fell off, replaced by another head with a much more surprised-looking human face with raised eyebrows carved out of the stone. “… Or are you new to this hero’s game?”
“Not new,” I said. “Just haven’t seen a giant LEGO toy before.”
The stone head fell back, replaced by the much more sinister-looking steel head that could have passed for something right out of Transformers. The little eye slits glowed gold, and the mouth and nose were covered by a /-shaped plate of steel. “I was once a boy. A son. I was loved. But my skin was gold. And the Corruption took hold of me and made me more monstrous.”
I pushed myself to my feet. “I’ve heard enough Corrupted sob stories to last a lifetime.”
“Have you?” He took another step. The metallic joints in his knee creaked. His right hand fell to the floor, and from the shelves on the other side of the room another hand lifted up, flinging itself at the Corrupted’s naked wrist. The new hand was nothing more than a pair of metal pinchers with serrated claws, perfect for grabbing the strange hose lying on the floor. A few drops of black liquid fell away from the nozzle, dripping onto the pinchers and sliding in between the metal parts.
“Empty,” he said, bending down so he could examine the hose. “Just as a new hero reveals herself. No mere coincidence. More evidence of my destiny.”
“Oil,” I whispered.
“Perceptive,” the creature said. “But hardly impressive. After all, we are in an oil field. You are not the first hero to guess as much. But do you know where we are?”
“Are you trying to intimidate me?” I asked, angry. “Just because you killed a hero?”
He shook his head. At the base of his neck, where his /-shaped mouth met his shoulders, a little oil dribbled out, running down his steel-plated chest, slipping around the old rusted circular rivets. “I did not kill Juliette.”
“Juliette,” I whispered. Why hadn’t she killed this thing? Why hadn’t she warned me about the Malevolence? Why hadn’t she given me more help? If she’d had visions of me, then she should have helped me more. She should have warned me about the Malevolence. “Why did she let you live? So you could haunt me?”
“Her true motivations are her own,” he snapped. “Regardless, I am more than happy to make a deal with you just as I did with her.”
“I’d much rather kill you,” I said. I felt something coming up from behind me; I willed my body back into its ethereal form just as another arm flew through my body, replacing the older one with the metal pinchers. This arm was molded silver, the long pointer finger extended. He lifted the arm up and pointed the finger at me; more oil squeezed out of the joint where the arm was attached to the torso.
“You’re acting foolish,” said the creature. “I have much to offer. And much to show you. Do you know for sure that I am evil? That is, that I will become evil?”
“Yes.”
The creature turned his head. More oil dribbled out around the base. “Such confidence. One wonders what goes through the heads of the poor fools who have been hunted down by rogue heroes.” He said the word with contempt. “Do you think we all have the knowledge I possess? Do you think the children of Grimms’ Fairy Tales understand what they truly are, even as they are changing? Praytell, what must they think when a mysterious figure breaks down their doors at night, sword in hand, ready to kill them?”
I said nothing. The anger was still there, but he’d begun chipping away at it. There was something different about this one. Something I couldn’t quite place. “I’ve never killed a Corrupted child.”
“Ah, but your predecessor did!” He held up his pointer finger, more oil seeping out where his arm met his torso. “Do you know why there are so few Corrupted children left? Because Juliette killed so, so many of them.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know more than you think,” he said. His industrial head fell away, replaced by a marble Greek head with curly hair. The face was wearing a wry smile. “I know so much. For I dream, too. I dreamt of Juliette and I have dreamt of you. I saw you fight a giant. I saw you fight my dark creator and dispatch him. Before you, I saw Juliette. I saw her slip into houses and remorselessly run her dagger across the necks of Corrupted children.” The mouth didn’t move when he spoke. It just kept wearing that same dry smile.
My heart went cold. “There’s no way you could possibly have seen that.”
“My brother was a child. She wasted no time dispatching him from this world. His flower faded, then burned away. But me … she spared me in exchange for something she needed. And she sensed that I was meant for greater things.”
“What was it she needed?” I asked, curious now.
The Greek head fell away, replaced once aga
in by the rusted industrial-looking one with the /-shaped mouthpiece. “A blanket.”
I stared at him, waiting, half-expecting a deep laugh to escape from behind the plate of steel covering his mouth. Then it hit me: The Spirit in the Bottle. A boy frees a spirit in a bottle, a moral ensues, and then the boy gets a blanket. One side of the blanket could heal wounds. The other side could turn things to silver. Things like the creature’s right arm.
“She was wounded,” I whispered.
“Near death.” The industrial-looking head fell back, replaced once again by the marble head with the wry Greek face. “I’d like to say I saved her, but she was hardly afraid of Death.”
“So what are you offering me, then?” I asked.
“I’m sure I have something.” He pointed with his right hand to the rows of shelves. “Lots of curiosities my brother collected over the years. Perhaps they would have been more useful in the hands of heroes, but you must understand my brother. He feared the heroes because he was obsessed with life. He loved it, despite his curious gold curse. Before his skin began hardening, he was content traveling in freak shows with the circus. People thought it was paint, until one day he absently scratched his arm—the Corruption was hardening—and flecks of gold peeled away. The circus ringmaster immediately went after him with a knife. I saw my brother’s flower begin to fade and I rushed to rescue him, killing the ringmaster and alerting both of us to the hero named Juliette, who dreamed only of our justifiable deed. She hounded my brother first, and by the time she came after me, the Corruption had taken hold as well, hardening my golden skin. Whereupon I too was hunted not by the hero but by greedy individuals who wanted to peel the gold from my body.”
“You don’t need to convince me of humanity’s flaws,” I said. “I’m well aware of them. But that doesn’t change the fact that your brother didn’t belong on this earth.”
“No, but he had to have belonged somewhere, wouldn’t you say?”
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 4 Page 5