by Don Webb
“He must be quite hideous,” said one of the men, his tongue loosened by brandy.
The dwarf looked at him and all warmth fled the room despite the fire.
“Yes, he is horrible. I fear for his life while I travel. He is not good-hearted as I am. Good-looking Christians are apt to rid themselves of such horror. With the gold we will find a secluded spot and trouble you fair men no more.”
The dwarf continued his tale. After so many scores of years, the old ones had no doubt died off. But gold does not die. He was not strong enough to unbury the gate, but he could guide them to it. Later some of the aldermen began to doubt the tale. How could the dwarf know why the Romans left? Why would a solider want such an ugly bride? Why didn’t the dwarf warn them of what they would find? Such fears chased them to an early grave.
It took a few weeks to assemble the workforce. The aldermen hired only men from other villages. Orphans and beggars were preferred. Great secrecy was maintained. But one morning they stood before Klüt Hill and began to dig at its western face. A healthy pine forest covered most of the hill, but only scraggly oak bushes covered the spot the dwarf had led them to. Beneath the rocky soil was a pile of boulders. The workers carted these off until a vast stone gate stood uncovered.
It took two days. The mayor and the aldermen brought vast quantities of food to the workers. At the end of the second day the mayor told them, “Tomorrow we will go inside the hill. Wealth beyond your greatest desires is heaped up inside. Tonight we drink!” Casks of wine were opened. Thirsty workers filled their bellies. They slept, and as the poison worked in their systems, they died. At dawn the mayor and the aldermen and the dwarf stood in front of the gate.
The bodies lay everywhere. All the wine barrels were empty save for one. Its top had been removed, and poisonous red liquid still filled it to the top. The mayor nodded. Three of the alderman seized the dwarf. They carried him to the open barrel. He screamed and struggled as they dipped him by his legs. He took nearly a quarter of an hour to drown. When he stopped struggling, a deep ringing sound came from within the hill, and the aldermen grew afraid.
“Don’t be cowardly. We agreed. We must keep this secret our own. The ghosts of his people are just welcoming him. They cannot harm us for we carry the cross.”
The men hastened to put their crosses around their necks. The mayor had asked the village priest to bless the crosses against whatever sort of demon might live in the hill. As an afterthought he killed the priest, lest the Church come hungering for money. Opening the gate was not easy. The aldermen regretted that they had slain the workers so soon. It took a day with iron pry bars to get the gate to open even a few inches. They moved away to sleep for the night. They did not relish lying with the dead. They planned to carry the bodies into the hill and close the gate after them.
The next morning a strange sight welcomed them.
The gate stood half open. The bodies of the slain workers were gone, as was the body of the dwarf. Pellets of rat dung lay everywhere. The youngest of the alderman turned to run, but the mayor caught him and pushed a knife in his belly. Now there were even fewer men to share the gold with.
“There will be more gold for all of us!”
They took torches and lit them and went into the cavern. The smell of rodent dung was overpowering. They walked on a soft and crunchy carpet of dung into the hill. The caverns led downwards. Tiny pawprints led the way. After a few hundred yards, larger footprints were seen. The good townspeople looked at them carefully. They were small prints, as though as from children. They were not many. Perhaps the dwarf’s people still lived, but certainly they did not live in great numbers.
Down they went, and still further down. They lit more torches. Maybe they should return to the surface? Maybe they were going all the way to Hades?
But gold. Their weight in gold.
The mayor’s brother spotted the crude buildings first. Low windowless stone buildings. No light coming from their open doors. It was a little village of maybe twenty buildings; most were in ruins. They carried their torches in their left hands, their swords in their right. The clothes of the workers were scattered about. Then a score of yards from the village lay the workers’ half-eaten bodies. Then piles of dead and dying rats. Poisoned by the tainted flesh, hundreds of them. Some still twitched in agony; it was not a subtle poison, for the aldermen were not subtle men. Then they saw the body of the dwarf stripped of his clothes. Soft brown fur covered his body. Small feelers grew from under his arms and his crotch. He had been careful to shave his hands and face. The rats had been busy feeding on him as well. His eyes were gone, and his genitals and anus had been gnawed away. The good alderman crossed themselves. They were glad to move away from the dwarf’s body and into the village. Prayers were said; it is good to know God is on your side.
But the village proved worse. In the biggest building, whose roof was only inches above their heads, the good Christians found a church with pews and an altar and a god and its worshippers.
There were three of them—three of the dwarf’s people. They were smaller than him and much more ratlike. Their eyes were intact and milky white, unburdened by sight. They lay in the largest building around a pedestal that bore the figure of a short, many-breasted goddess. Her face was that of a rat and the tentacles under her arms and crotch were holding flint knives and strangely shaped devices or amulets. She played a syrinx, the shepherd’s pipes. She stood four feet tall, towering almost twice the height of her worshippers. The walls of the temple had no windows. Strange letters covered the walls, painted in some greenish-brown slime; they glistened wetly. One wall bore a fresco—humans and dwarves and rats ate one another, coupled with one another, danced with one another. The rat goddess stood above them. She bowed in prayer to a white toad god, who was himself looking at some vast shadowy figure that flew in the darkness.
The mayor’s brother began to laugh. “We are the gods of the fleas that bite us, our god feeds us his flesh, and other gods feed Him. Other gods feed Them. Eat and fuck and pray. Eat and fuck and pray.” The mayor hit him with the flat of his sword. He was embarrassed at his brother’s weak will.
“Find the gold.”
They left the temple. The other buildings seemed to be holding pens, except for the last and smallest building. Here in great yellow mounds was gold. Soft massy nuggets bearing the tooth-marks of thousands of rats lay in huge heaps. Each man gathered as much as he could carry. Humans cannot carry their own weight regardless of greed. Each began to dream of how he would slay the others. They began their heavy walk back to light and air. With each squelching in the rat dung, their greed grew. Each had a thousand dreams of avarice. Their torches grew short. They began to hear the rats about halfway to the surface. Hundreds of rats may have died, but thousands lived. They could see them scurrying just beyond their circle of light. They could see their little eyes glinting. They began to trot, filled with fear, but filled with greater love for their gold. One of the rats leapt upon the mayor. He knocked it to the soft ground and stabbed it with his sword.
It wasn’t entirely a rat. Its head was too big, and it had hands like a man. It even had something of a face.
The trot became a run. Some golden nuggets fell from the runners. A sparkly path lay in their wake like the breadcrumbs of Hansel and Gretel.
The rats began to squeak. The aldermen ran faster. They spied the gate.
They couldn’t shut it behind them, so they threw their torches down and made a fire across the opening. They gathered the dead limbs from the scraggly bushes the workers had cleared away until they had a great fire.
It was dusk, and they trudged back toward their village.
They never spoke of the caverns. When the families of the workers asked after them, the alderman claimed a foreign prince had paid them to join his army. They augmented their tale with gold, and it was believed. Soon their gold had its effect. They built houses, repaired walls, built a cathedral. People moved to Hamelin. All was well for years. Som
e village gossips suggested that the town’s leaders had sold the workers, but how could such things be said of such pious men? They went to Mass every Sunday; they gave to the monks and the poor. And in time they died off. They died young but uneventfully with one exception: when the mayor died, his house was overrun with rats. They even defiled his corpse.
Years passed. There was a new mayor, and new aldermen. The city prospered. One summer people began complaining of bites. Flea bites. Everyone itched; most children scratched themselves bloody. Some broke into a terrible fever where big black sores broke out on the skin. Doctors gave out sachets of useless herbs, priests prayed. Even the local witch tried her hand at stopping the fever. The rat population increased. Rats bit babies and the elderly. Rats ate grain and flour. Rats scurried across the dinner table. Rats reared their ugly heads on the cathedral’s altar. Rats stole the body of Christ from the priest’s hands.
People were leaving. Everyone was complaining. The mayor offered a thousand guilders to anyone who could get rid of the rat problem. Then two thousand guilders.
One day, the shortest adult anyone had seen came to town. He wore a fool’s motley. He came into town riding a large brown dog that growled fiercely when anyone drew near. And he let it be known that he was expert in dealing with rats. In spite of his tiny stature, he was perfectly formed. It was as though the finest sculptor had made the little man from white marble. The mayor summoned him at once.
“I want twice my weight in gold,” announced the dwarf.
No one made a jest. A previous mayor had told them that a very ugly little person might show up some day claiming gold. He should be paid. But surely this handsome young man was not the imp of legend. They viewed beauty and ugliness as surface things.
“How will you deal with the rats?”
“That is my business.”
His exorbitant price was agreed to. The dwarf pulled a syrinx from his pack and began to play the most unearthly melody. Rats ran up from the sewers, rats ran out of the spaces between the walls. Rats came from the banks of the Weser. Rats poured out of holes in the cemetery. The dwarf paused to call his dog. He mounted the strange steed, and the dog began trotting off through the woods. The huge, smelly, chittering pack of rats followed him. The mayor and the aldermen followed. The dwarf rode to the west to Klüt Hill. The region was said to be haunted. When the dwarf arrived he began playing with fiendish energy. The rats screamed and began to pour into a large stone door cut into the side of the hill. It took several minutes for the living tide to go through the half-opened door. The dwarf dismounted and kicked the door. It swung shut with a huge crash.
The dwarf stopped his piping.
“I am ready for my gold,” he said.
The mayor replied that it would take a few days to assemble the gold, but that he would put the dwarf up in his own home. He spared no expense. He brought women and wine and the finest foods that the town could manage. The town council met at midnight.
The mayor told them that if they paid the dwarf his fee the town would be bankrupt. It was agreed then. The mayor would kill the dwarf while he slept. It was a sad thing, but it ensured their jobs and the city’s welfare. The mayor set off to his home.
The next day the dwarf rode his dog to the town hall. The mayor was nowhere to be seen. The dwarf announced that he would collect his fee in three days. The aldermen demurred, saying they could not pay the amount requested. He rode off to the west.
For three days the town attempted to gather as much gold as it could. Truth be told, a good deal of gold was hidden around the town in the fine homes of the aldermen who had dealt so badly with another dwarf a hundred years ago. These families loved their gold and kept most of it. The little man would have to be satisfied. The dwarf rode into town. The small pile was offered to him.
“This is too little, this is too late!” He made no move to gather the gold, but rode away again. The walls were sealed that night and all the good citizens locked their doors. An hour after sunset the piping began. It came from everywhere or nowhere. It echoed round the bones. People tried to block their ears, but unlike Odysseus’ sailors, the mad piping came through. The children began to dance. Parents tried to stop them. One father even broke his son’s leg, but they danced. After an hour of dancing and piping the children went out of doors. If their parents restrained them, they fought. They battered walls with their heads, bit their parents’ arms, screamed in an unknown tongue. So they were let out of their homes. After they had screamed at the town gate it was opened.
In the moonlight stood the pied piper and his dog. He set off for Klüt Hill. Some brave souls followed, but most ran back in their homes and barricaded the doors. The dwarf played madly. All the children save for the lad with the recently broken leg entered through the gate into the hill. The dwarf walked in behind them. The great gate slammed shut. The lame boy beat against the door until his fists were bloody. For three days he listened to the screams and the music.
Then the townspeople came and covered the door with stones and dirt. Europe forgot as a new disease began spreading—the Black Death the rats brought. Who in the face of such horror can remember a fairy tale?
Hamelin became a city with four great forts. A watch was kept on Klüt Hill for nearly seven hundred years. Only once in the twentieth century was anything untoward seen there. A short man, but by no means a dwarf, was said to be seen digging himself free from the earth. He later rose to power, but being denounced by a woodsman who believed in fairy tales did not stop his career. Some did think the man had a rodentlike cast to his face, but such remarks were dangerous to utter.
Since then all has been quiet on Klüt Hill. The tales are forgotten, and no one believes in the Pied Piper.
(For Richard Lupoff)
A Game of Nine Pins
Nathan Pedersen was at a great place. He was three-quarters of the way done with his thesis. He would finish two months ahead of time. His father had only received a GED, his mom had dropped out of high school to have him, his granny had two semesters at a junior college. Everybody was so proud, and then he met the nutcase. All that happened to Nathan can be blamed on the fact that was ahead of schedule; if deadlines were looming, he would have never gone on the trip that weekend. If you learn anything from this fable, kids, it’s this: put off your schoolwork to the last minute.
Nathan had chosen English because his mom and dad both had suffered with English at Sam Houston High School in Doublesign, Texas. Nathan had an amazing academic life considering that none of his people had made it through college. He was valedictorian at Sam Houston High, he got a full scholarship to Rice University in Houston, he graduated with honors and went on to Yale. All his schools didn’t know what to do with him as a data entry—he was brown and spoke Spanish like his mom, Juanita Pedersen, but his surname made him an Anglo. His mom and dad lived in a two-bedroom house with warped wooden floors and cracked stucco. Neither of them had ever read a book for pleasure, neither of them had any clue about why Nathan was so smart, neither of them could be any prouder of their son. Everyone in the Doublesign Pentecostal church had seen Juanita’s photos. Every drinker in the Shamrock Bar had heard Rolf’s sagas about his son. His teachers at the high school still sent him Christmas cards jokingly warning him about New Haven’s winters. Nathan worked hard, had high self-esteem, and had never been really frightened of anyone or anything in his life.
The nutcase was a different story. He would have dropped out of school because of a drug problem, and he knew more about fear than most humans ever should.
Nathan was writing about Washington Irving’s source material. He sought out folklore, fakelore, and contemporary writings. He felt he had uncovered almost all Irving’s sources, certainly every source that could be uncovered. Dr. Winslow Tyler, his thesis advisor, foresaw a great teaching career for Nathan, as well as the possibility of reworking his thesis into a popular book. Dr. Tyler urged Nathan to practice reaching out to a literate audience. So, with the backing of the
English department, Nathan arranged a Halloween reading of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” followed by a mini-lecture about Washington Irving. He impressed the crowd by telling them how Washington Irving had read young Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” in manuscript and helped Poe revise it. He recounted Irving’s suggestion to Francis Scott Key, “Francis, you set your poem ‘The Defense of Fort McHenry’ to music, it could catch on. Why not call it ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’?”
“You know, folks, growing up in Texas I always thought that song was about my cousin—you know, José, can you see?”
The audience loved it—undergraduates, graduate students, even some townies. What could be more American—a young brown from Texas, talking about one of the people that gave birth to American literature on Halloween, the most American of all holidays?
A slightly fat, gray-and-black-haired man came up to him after the applause. The guy looked to be in his forties, didn’t look crazy, and you’d never have guessed that he had had electroshock therapy. He had congenital blue eyes and scars on his lower lip like two knife cuts.
“Dr. Pedersen,” he began.
“Not ‘doctor’ yet,” Nathan countered.
“OK, Mr. Pedersen, I loved your talk. I may have something for you. My late father was an amateur Irving scholar. I’ve still got his papers, I tried to give them to Yale a few years ago, but since Dad never finished his doctorate, they weren’t interested. I know Dad would really have loved it if somebody could make use of them. I mean, I don’t know if they’re groundbreaking scholarship. I run a coffee shop, but I would love it if he could be mentioned in a footnote somewhere.”
“I would love to look his stuff over.”