I turned, looking at him. “You think you’ve done my species a favor.”
He looked down. His head tumbled to the ground in front of my feet. I glanced down, half-expecting the head to roll back to the pile of limbs. But it sat there, its sorrowful face staring back up at me. When I looked up again, the industrial-looking head was back, its golden eyes staring down at me.
“You know humanity will destroy itself. You can see it here, in this place. The ultimate mixture of greed and desperation and contempt for nature. Your species will never stop because the oil is too tempting. The Malevolence knew your species couldn’t help itself. That is why the Malevolence sought to wipe you out. But I have an alternate destiny. I can save humanity. I’ll drink the oil until the earth below is as dry as a Dakota summer.”
“And then what?” I asked. “There’s oil in other places, too.”
“And there will be other heroes.”
The words chilled me. “That’s not exactly the kind of thing I like to be reminded about.”
“And yet it is true. As true as humanity’s unquenchable thirst for oil. So I offer you this: the life of your friend in exchange for the fulfillment of my destiny.” He turned to me, cocking his head. Oil leaked out from his neck joint. “What say you, hero?”
I turned away from the flames. “We have a deal.”
… And then, once you bring Seth back, I’m going to kill you.
Behind us, black towers spread over the horizon, silent and dead.
Chapter 12: Alice
I woke in my own bed, heart racing, mouth dry and scratchy, the scent of oil and chemicals stuck in my nasal passages. I pulled away the covers and turned off my alarm, sitting up, looking around, feeling different. There was a way to get Seth back. Juliette had put her trust in this creature … and she’d let him live for a reason.
But I wouldn’t.
I stood up and stretched. Already my back felt better. I hadn’t told Chase, but sleeping just one night on that stupid bed downstairs had nearly driven me insane. Who puts a metal bar right where the person’s back is? A sadist, that’s who.
I owe him. The thought kept running through my mind while I pulled clothes out of the closet and tossed them on the half-made bed. He’d stuck with me through all of this. Even now. Even while I felt myself drifting away from him. And I was reaching out, trying to grab his fingers before the nameless darkness swallowed me.
I had to bring Seth back. I had to right my mistake no matter what. That was the only way to get through this.
And breaking my deal with this creature is just the icing on the cake. No more deals. No more Ms. Nice Hero.
So why was I afraid?
I packed a backpack full of practical clothes. Corrupted-fighting clothes that weren’t too loose—there was no point in aiming for style points anymore. I packed the vial of magic liquid, the magic pen and the Juniper seed, hesitating when I heard its sweet, familiar song as I clutched it in my hand. I did all of this without hesitation, as if deep down I knew it was all important. It all had meaning now. No matter what was about to happen, I wanted to be as ready as possible.
I went into the bathroom, showering and giving my entire body a once-over with lotion.
Pink scars lined both my shoulders. Scar tissue. Hypertrophic scars, the kind that rise up. Five lines total, three on my right shoulder and two on my left. I couldn’t even remember what creature had caused which scars. The two on my left had begun to shrink and fade, replacing the wound with enough normal skin tissue that they might eventually disappear entirely. The three on my right shoulder would be with me forever.
Just below my left shoulder was a small pink puncture wound, the result of my ethereal battle with the Malevolence. He’d stabbed my ethereal form; my body—lying on the bed on the first floor of the castle—had reacted. Purple and black bruises appeared all around the spot where the Malevolence’s blade had touched. His blade had cut through my body and I’d felt its cold steel pierce my ribcage. But like the lion who’d attacked me in a dream the previous night, I’d woken up with only a small puncture.
But the little puncture had yet to disappear. Another scar. Another reminder of what had happened that night. Another reminder that Seth was dead.
It’s your fault.
“No,” I told my reflection.
But it’s true. You’d been warned. Agnim had warned you …
“Seth shouldn’t have put himself in danger!” I shouted. I drew in a deep breath, felt it catch in my throat, and let out a soft sob. There wasn’t any time for this. It was all going to be OK in the end, so long as I ensured the statue creature kept up his end of the deal.
I dabbed at my eyes with my towel and got dressed. No more thinking like this, I told myself. No more blaming people. No more anger. Soon, everything would be back to normal. I would right my wrong.
I was going to claw my way back from the abyss.
Chapter 13: Briar
I’ll have you know I was quite fine. OK, OK, so I had a bit of a blackout, but given the stress I’d been under, it was hardly unexpected. Even Br’er Rabbit has his limits. Besides, spending the night in the same room as Chase would have been a disaster anyway—he snores quite loudly.
So! I spent the night in the downtown Milwaukee library, and then the next day I went with Alice and Chase to their local library and emerged partially victorious: I’d found the oil field where the creature was hiding. Yes, yes, I know—he told Alice in her dream that he was in North Dakota … but it was still yours truly who found the exact location. And I’d already been on the right track before said information was divulged.
But what to make of this creature? What to make of the Corruption’s change? The fairy tale gives some clues:
He’d once been a boy with gold skin. He was turned into a statue and then saved by his brother, who’d seen his brother’s flower wilt. You see, each of the brothers had a flower that wilted if their lives were in danger. Yes, yes, I know … those pesky Grimm fellows were fond of adding a sprinkle of strange to each of their stories. And I’m sure both of them were named Hans.
Perhaps more curious was this connection with Juliette. Judging by her rather pernicious actions inside the forest during our “Corrupted hunt,” I wasn’t so sure Alice needed more back-story at the moment, especially because I didn’t know with certainty that this statue creature was the same one Juliette had run into. I wasn’t trying to deceive Alice, per se … I just wanted to keep things simple.
But I shall dutifully record it now, for the purposes of this chronicle.
Toward the end of things, Juliette’s dreams were plaguing her like locusts in Egypt. I cannot overstate it. She woke in cold sweats. She slept only a few hours a night and spent half the day weary and exhausted. She dozed off in the afternoon, and then in the evening—after a spot of green tea and a small dinner—we were off in search of the next Corrupted.
As it happened, we found ourselves inside a small town in northwestern Wisconsin named Eau Claire. It’s a college town complete with its very own Perkins (pancakes), Starbucks (coffee), and multiple pawnshops (cheap junk). All three were necessary to our survival at this point. We’d been tracking Corrupted for years, and were low on money.
More on that in a moment.
First, I should explain our logic. The pancakes are a given. The coffee became necessary, too, especially when Juliette’s insomnia grew worse. Personally, I thought we’d have been better off buying a big ol’ jug of cheap stuff from the local supermarket, but Juliette wasn’t having it. She wanted her expensive Starbucks coffee, so we paid for Starbucks coffee.
Now, the pawnshops were our modern-day bartering source. Juliette—like other heroes—had found early on that using the magic pen to draw gold or anything too valuable was an invitation to every shady villain within a hundred miles to make our lives miserable, so she stuck mainly with spools of copper wire. Indeed! Copper wire.
The pawnshop operators typically assumed Juliette was a d
rug addict, and our time in Eau Claire was no exception. Which of course meant they thought that this young woman—dressed in punky 80’s fashion right down to the torn jeans—had stolen the copper. But they took it nonetheless, silencing their little consciences long enough to offer money or a trade if we needed any supplies. If they knew the truth—that she drew the copper wire on the concrete behind their stores—they might perhaps have tried to barter for the pen instead.
Regardless! Eau Claire had everything we needed before we hit the road again. It also had an unexpected surprise waiting for Juliette …
A door.
Not just any door! No, that would hardly be worth mentioning. This particular door was not in the right place at all, and therein laid the mystery. We found it shortly after doing battle with a talking cat from one of the Grimms’ less well-known fairy tales … certainly not one of our finer skirmishes, but this cat was hardly the type of thing you wanted to leave running around willy-nilly in a town full of cute little pets.
Pets this particular cat was fond of eating.
There were also the toxic hairballs, which nearly blinded Juliette when she misjudged the nasty little creature’s feistiness. But! But, but, but … this is not a story about hairballs. We eventually sacked the nasty little thing thanks to some good old-fashioned teamwork. No doubt he was giving all the good cats in the neighborhood an awful reputation, and so his destruction was a “win” for the city. You’re welcome, Eau Claire.
This battle took place in a very nice little park next to a very nice little lake. It was dusk, the weather was lousy (scattered showers with a chance of hail), yet the park’s beauty remained. A little stream of water had cut deep into the earth, which was littered with large dark rocks, and so the water cascaded over like little waterfalls as it made its way to the lake. Beyond the stream was grass and a little cookout area with a black charcoal grill and a playground that the Corrupted cat was using as a litterbox. That is all. There was no magic door.
And then, suddenly, there was a magic door. Just lying on the grass not ten feet from the cookout area.
“Surely we didn’t miss this when we arrived,” I remarked.
Juliette mumbled a “No. It’s glowing.” Typical for her to mumble. Had been doing it ever since I first met her and scared her half to death.
Before I could stop her, she opened the door and went inside! The door slammed shut behind her. I contemplated following, but thought perhaps it would be best to ensure that the door didn’t try and escape, since it certainly hadn’t been there moments ago. My logic was a bit flawed, I admit, but it’s important to remember the door was glowing just a bit. That meant the door belonged to one of the Grimms’ fairy tales. Strange? Quite so. It was rare for an object from the fairy tales to manifest, so rare that I doubted my own eyes until I very gingerly tapped on the wooden surface with my big foot.
Juliette emerged a few minutes later, no worse for wear.
“Well?” I asked frantically. “What was it? Are you OK?”
“No,” she whispered.
And of course she wasn’t. She hadn’t been OK for a long time, not since the death of her family. And she would not elaborate. No explanation of the door’s contents … only a brisk retreat back into that dark place in her mind.
I mention all of this for a reason, of course. While Br’er Rabbit is still not one to place much in coincidences, per se, it can still be quite shocking when one slaps you across the face.
For you see, the door appeared again.
Alice and Chase and I made good time through Wisconsin and across Minnesota, ending up in Jamestown, North Dakota shortly before nightfall. “The Buffalo City.” Bah! More like “We Shot the Buffalo to the Brink of Extinction City.” Really, I’m hardly one to complain but let’s be honest: as a member of the animal kingdom, the idea of hunting and killing millions of buffalo for sport hardly grants one the privilege of staking a claim to their identity. Why, it would be as crazy as Br’er Fox killing me off and eating me and then proclaiming our neighborhood “The Br’er Rabbit Neighborhood.”
I digress. We’d chosen Jamestown, North Dakota as our destination for the night because all our butts were sore from nine hours of driving, and Chase clearly needed a break. I’d have offered to drive, but you know how that would likely have turned out.
So nine hours into our adventure, it was time to call it a day. We made our way through the little town center, which was full of two-story brick buildings much in the style of the mid-twentieth century. A very Main Street feel to it, right down to the gas station that had saved two of its old steel gas pumps with the analog gallon meters and the antique store across the street that proudly displayed a variety of ancient farming equipment.
We chose a camping place by the Jamestown Reservoir, a wide swath of water surrounded by flat land and golden yellow prairie grass and a few admirable packs of birch trees with bright green leaves that were actually quite tasty. We camped in a place where the reservoir branched off, claiming an entire camping site for ourselves. It was mighty hot, but the shade of an American elm tree shielded us from the late afternoon sun. While Alice and I put together Chase’s big blue Chase family tent, he put together the little red Chase family grill and promptly began cooking some fantastic-looking veggie patties.
We talked until nightfall. I admit, it was one of the more enjoyable moments in my life, listening to the two of them tell me about everything they wanted to do with their lives. Alice wanted to be a nurse, and then she wanted to run a hospital. I think she surprised herself by admitting as much, but any embarrassment quickly subsided as she went on about the potential of every human life. She treasured it, perhaps more so in knowing that her time might come prematurely.
And that saddened me.
Chase had dreams, too. He wanted to coach, but he also wanted to teach. He wasn’t sure if he could handle younger kids, especially if he was stuck in his wheelchair for most of the day. But he thought he could handle high school or maybe college. Both he and Alice had applied to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Both had trouble picturing themselves there. For Chase, it was a matter of success—he was still new to the “good student” game and had always imagined himself at college via baseball scholarship, not interested in academics so much as home runs.
For Alice, it was a matter of survival—even just months away, college seemed so far off that it was hard to grasp.
I wish I could relay all of this in dialogue—you know, record the conversation real proper-like for this chronicle. But I’d like to treasure this conversation for myself. I know that’s selfish, but it had particular meaning for me, as did the evenings I spent playing Risk with Seth.
Friendship … who’d have thunk Br’er Rabbit could get so sentimental?
Later, I turned invisible and took a walk all by my lonesome. The veggie patties—all three of them—weren’t sitting right in my stomach, and I figured a good meander along the shoreline might settle things. More lurching, as Alice might say. But the walk didn’t do much, and I was just about ready to turn back when a loud bang startled me. Bright yellow fireflies reflected on the surface of the water, and for a moment I couldn’t fight the urge to take flight. I ducked behind a pair of elm trees with thick trunks just as two more bangs erupted from above. After a few breaths that whistled between my front teeth, I risked a cautious looky-loo.
Fireworks. Beautiful, colorful fireworks. First red and then orange and then blue, each one blooming like a neon flower. For a moment, the sight settled my stomach. I have always loved fireworks. I loved watching them change over the years. First they got louder and then they got bigger and then their shapes changed, sometimes big circles and sometimes wavy rings and sometimes chaotic bees whizzing this way and that.
Then my rabbit nose picked up a strange stench: death. I followed the scent farther up river to where it was strongest and hopped up to the muddy shore.
Fish. Dozens and dozens of dead fish piling up on the shore as if tryi
ng to escape onto shore. Another white firework lit up the sky, and whatever oily residue had killed the fish reflected on their scales. Black, oozy oil with a rainbow-like sheen.
And I thought to myself, Well if this just ain’t a bad omen.
When I returned, Alice was sitting beside the fire with Chase. She had her diary out and when she saw me, she closed it and handed it over. “Write,” she commanded.
“About what?” I asked, feeling a magical pull as my paw reached out for the very normal-looking blue pen. I gripped it between my digital pads—rabbit fingers, for the layperson—ready to scribble whether I wanted to or not.
“Everything,” she said. “Everything that’s happened since … since Seth. We need a chronicle of everything.” She turned to her furless love, who was lying beside her on a plaid blanket, watching curiously. “And then you.”
So I wrote. And then Chase wrote a little, too. And then I wrote some more, until her diary was sufficiently caught up with everything. Then she ripped up a few of her dream entries, which I thought was rather strange. But I let it go. I was too tired to lecture her on the importance of keeping a precise record of events.
And then, the next morning, when we unzipped the tent … there it was.
The magic door. And this time, the hero wants me to come along, and she is tugging on my arm even as I write this.
And that sick feeling has returned.
Chapter 14: Alice
The staircase led down, and the moment the door slammed shut behind us, so did the warmth. Cool basement air kissed my skin. It reminded me of the storage room in the lower level of my parents’ house where we stored hoses and yard games and old dusty golf clubs my parents had retired from their golf bags.
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 4 Page 7