All at once the door opened the rest of the way, and a woman as old as the hills, riding on her electric power chair, came out. Hansel and Gretel were so frightened that they dropped what they had in their hands. But the old woman just nodded her head and said, “My, my, you dear children, who has brought you here? Come right in and stay with me. No harm will befall you.”
Of course the old woman was only pretending to be friendly. She was really a wicked witch who lay in wait for children, and she had built the house of bread just to lure them. She had red eyes and couldn’t see far, but she had a keen sense of smell, and could tell when humans—especially children—were near. When a child came into her power she would kill it, cook it, and eat it. She enjoyed this immensely, since the only other food she had was bread.
She took both of them by the hand and led them into her little house. Then she set nice food before them—milk and pancakes with sugar, apples, and nuts. It was really only bread enchanted to look like fancy food, for she had no real food but bread, but it deceived the children. After that, she made up two beautiful white beds for them, and Hansel and Gretel lay down in them and promptly fell asleep.
Early in the morning, before the children were awake, she was already up, and when she saw both of them fast asleep and looking so darling, with their rosy fat cheeks, she muttered to herself, “That will be a nice bite!”
She dug into a closet and pulled out a large dog carrier she had used when she owned a Great Dane named Niels Bohr. She seized Hansel with her shriveled hands and shut him up in the cage and locked it. Scream as he would, it didn’t help him any. She went to Gretel, shook her until she woke up, and cried, “Get up, you lazy creature, Fetch some water and cook your brother some bread. He has to stay in the cage and get fat. As soon as he’s fat enough I’ll eat him.” Gretel began to cry as if her heart would break, but it was no use. She had to do what the wicked witch told her.
Now, Hansel got the finest loaves of bread, but poor Gretel was given nothing but crusts. Every morning the old woman would creep out to the cage and cry, “Hansel, put your finger out so I can feel whether you are getting fat.” Hansel would put out a dry twig Gretel had brought him, and the old woman’s eyes were so bad that she couldn’t tell the difference. She thought it was Hansel’s finger, and she just couldn’t understand why he didn’t get fat. Of course it didn’t help that Hansel was giving some of his food to his sister.
When four weeks had gone by and Hansel still was as thin as ever, she completely lost patience, and was willing to wait no longer. “Come on, Gretel, hurry up and get some water! Whether he’s fat or thin, tomorrow I’ll kill Hansel and cook him.”
Oh, how the poor little sister did grieve as she had to get the water, and how the tears ran down her cheeks.
“Light the oven,” the witch told Gretel. “We’re going to have a tasty roasted boy today!”
Gretel did so, noting as she did so that the woodpile was very, very low.
The witch was hungry and impatient as witches are wont to be, and she told Gretel, “See if the oven is hot yet. Crawl in and see if it’s hot enough to cook your brother.”
Gretel could see the flames and knew the oven was hot. She saw the witch was trying to trick her, and that if she got in, the witch would close the oven and cook her. So she said, “I don’t know how to. How do I get inside?”
“Goose, Goose!” cried the witch angrily, “The oven is big enough—why, look, I can even get in myself,” and she scrambled up and stuck her head in the oven.
Gretel said, “Goose? I’ll give you Goose!” and gave the witch a tremendous push so that she fell right in. She shut the door and fastened the bolt.
The witch began to howl in the most dreadful way imaginable, but Gretel stuck her fingers in her ears to block the sound, and the wicked witch burned to death miserably.
Gretel ran to set her brother free. She opened the cage as quickly as she could, and cried, “Hansel, we are saved! The old witch is dead!” Hansel sprang out like a bird. They rejoiced, threw their arms around each other’s necks, and danced around and kissed each other! Since there was no longer anything to fear, they went inside the witch’s house. Then they tossed the place until they discovered amongst the witch’s belongings an AAA map of the forest.
“Look,” said Hansel, “with this we can get home. And back here later if we want, I have an idea.”
They filled a large basket with bread, stuffed the precious map in a pocket, and set off into the forest to search for the way home.
Luck was with them, until they came to a large lake with no bridges, nor any other way to get across. Gretel was about to start crying again, when Hansel said, “Look! A white duck!”
Gretel looked out over the lake and said, “I don’t see a duck, just a funny looking white boat.”
“That’s not a boat, it’s a duck. A war-surplus amphibious vehicle. The owner has painted it white and put signs, something about tours, on the side.” He waved at the duck and hollered until the driver saw him. Pretty soon the duck came to the shore until its wheels touched, and then it rolled right up on the land. Hansel walked over and said to the driver, “We need to get home. Can you give us a drive across the lake?”
The driver shook his head and said, “We charge thirty pfennigs for the tour, kid. You got any money?”
“No, sir, we don’t. But we really need help.”
“Sorry, kid. No money, no—Ouch!”
The woman sitting behind him, who happened to be his wife, had hit him over the head with her umbrella that had a handle carved like a parrot’s head.
“Sam, they’re just kids. Have a heart.”
The driver rubbed his head and said, “Okay, okay, Mary. Hop in, kids.” As soon as Hansel and Gretel were seated, he turned the duck around, splashed back into the water, and carried them safely to the other side.
Pretty soon they came to a wood that kept looking more and more familiar, and at last, in the distance, they saw their father’s house. They started to run. They burst into the living room and threw themselves on their father’s neck.
Since he had left the children in the forest, he had not had a single happy hour. He said to them, “Your stepmother is dead. When you took her diet pills, she gained a hundred pounds in a week, then had a heart attack. And when she died, her daughters left. They were very confused. One said they were moving to the City. The second said something about getting a pad in the Village. And the third seemed to think they were going to an orchard, she kept talking about the Big Apple.” He shook his head. “I never did figure it out, but they’re gone. You are with me now, my dear children!”
The two children hugged the woodcutter again.
Hansel said to his father, “We found a house of bread, with a wheat field outside it, and enormous supplies of flour, but very little wood to use in the oven. If we could get a wagon, and place on it all the tomatoes that are ripe, and all the cheese made from the cow’s milk, and all the wood you have chopped…”
“Certainly, my son,” said the woodcutter.
Soon they were ready, and climbed in the wagon to drive to the witch’s house.
When they arrived, Hansel had his father build a fire in the oven and mix up great amounts of bread dough. He set Gretel to work grating the cheese and cooking the tomatoes. And he went outside, where they could hear him banging.
When he was done, Hansel took the other two outside. They saw he had erected a huge sign that read “Hansel and Gretel’s Pizza.” It was visible for miles, and the customers were already starting to arrive.
That day they made enough money to fill three moneybags, and in the days following, even more. Soon they were very rich, since they owned the only pizza joint in the Kingdom, and they lived happily ever after.
A Very Statuesque Woman
[Magic Beans?]
THALIA WAS DEAD—there was no doubt about that. I had watched her die. More to the point, I had killed her. Oh, nothing messy like strangling or shooting, I
used a slow poison. She got sicker and sicker and weaker and weaker until she died. Then, I buried her body in the cellar. I drove an inflated dummy wearing her wig to the airport, and I told the neighbors she had left for a sanatorium that specialized in wasting diseases like hers.
I know she’s dead. That’s why I can’t figure out what’s happening in the cellar. Or maybe I’d rather not know.
The sanatorium actually exists, out on the West Coast. It’s run by an old college friend of mine. Well, no, not exactly a friend, maybe, but when I arrived, I was shown into his office immediately.
He greeted me warily. “Hello, Jack. Nice to see you out here. What can I do for you?”
“Hello, Andy. Nice place you have here. I’ll bet you make a bundle running this place, don’t you?”
“I make enough. Is it money you need? A loan? Or just blackmail?”
“Andy, Andy! Please! Just because I ask an occasional favor in return for not telling anyone what really happened to the Dean’s wife, there’s no need to use ugly words. I did you a favor, you do me a favor once in a while. That’s all. I don’t want any money, I have plenty. And Thalia’s will gives me everything of hers, I’ll be rolling in it when she’s officially dead.”
“Officially?”
“Oh, well, yes, that’s the favor. She’s been very sick, one of those wasting diseases, and she died just before I came out here. But everyone thinks she came here with me—for treatments. It would be so much more convenient if I could take home a death certificate that says she died here, say tomorrow or the next day, hmmm?”
“Jack, I know you too well. If she had died from a real illness, you could have gotten a death certificate there. You killed her, right?”
“Well, let’s just say I didn’t want our coroner doing a chemical analysis on her body, and I didn’t have a doctor handy to sign the death certificate so I could avoid the autopsy.”
“Didn’t have a doctor you could blackmail, you mean! But wouldn’t her doctor, the doctor she was seeing, have noticed something?”
“Now, that was the strange thing about Thalia. She had, well, I don’t know what to call it, the opposite of hypochondria. She literally wouldn’t see a doctor to save her life. I guess I was counting on that when I started the poison, and it worked out just right.”
“But why, Jack, why?”
“For all her virtues, Thalia had one great fault. In the bedroom, she could have air-conditioned Antarctica. Well, I just had to get a little on the side, and she caught me. She threatened divorce if she caught me again. It was really hard doing without sex during the six months I was poisoning her, but I managed it. Now I can get out and start catching up—discreetly, of course, as befits a grieving widower, but catch up I will.”
“You’re sick! Disgusting!”
“That may be, Andy, but not half as sick as the Dean’s wife. Now, about that death certificate…”
In the end, Andy gave me the death certificate, just like I knew he would. He even threw in an urn filled with ashes. I don’t know where he got it. I have no idea whose ashes they are. I don’t want to know. But I took the urn back with me and placed it on the mantel and told everyone it was Thalia’s ashes.
The will went through easily, too. Our lawyer greased a few palms at spots where there could have been trouble, so there wasn’t any. Soon I owned everything. Including the house. Including the cellar. And including whatever was going on down there in the cellar.
It’s an old house, and most of the cellar has a dirt floor. Well, it had a dirt floor until recently. One part, where the furnace is, had a concrete floor. Of course now it’s all concrete, I put down the concrete floor myself. I couldn’t trust anyone else to do it, could I? Hmmm?
I dug a hole in the cellar floor and buried Thalia before I left for the sanatorium. I tamped the dirt down real good, and dumped the leftover dirt out in the garden. Didn’t want it obvious that someone had been digging, after all. I figured it would sink in after a while, and I could just bring some dirt back from the garden and fill it in again.
Only it didn’t work out that way. When I got home from the coast, there was a hump in the cellar floor. I tried to tamp it down again, but it wouldn’t go down. I poked a long metal rod down into the hump, far enough to make holes in the body and let any decomposition gases escape, but it didn’t help. Finally I rented a power tamper.
I got it flat, but every time I did, it started to swell up again after a day or two. That was when I put down the concrete floor. I tamped the mound down real good, then I had the truck pull up outside the cellar window and run the chute down into the cellar. I did the entire cellar so it wouldn’t be obvious, and I did all the spreading and smoothing myself. Six inches thick that concrete was. I was so sore I could hardly move for several days, but I figured it was worth it. Wouldn’t you? There was a beautiful, smooth, concrete cellar floor, and Thalia was under it where nobody would ever find her.
My peace of mind lasted only a few weeks. Jock, my part-time handyman, came to see me. “Mr. McCormick, sir, there’s somethin’ wrong with that new cellar floor. ’Tisn’t flat.”
“What do you mean, Jock? I put in that floor myself, and I was very careful with it. It’s as flat as a concrete floor ever is, they’re never perfect.”
“Aye, sir, but they don’t normally have a mound six inches high that I tripped over and durn near broke my neck. This one does.”
We went down to look, and sure enough, the floor was swollen up six inches or so. I don’t have to tell you exactly where in the cellar it was.
I thought quickly. “Jock, this is caused by excess moisture. There was a spring under the house many years ago. It dried up, but it must be coming back. I’ll have someone out to look at it, don’t you worry about it. You just go home and rest, this could have given you a nasty tumble, I’ll pay you for the whole day anyway.” The last got to Jock’s Scottish blood, and he left.
I examined the floor carefully. My explanation had been trumped up on the spot, but fortunately Jock wasn’t too smart. The concrete had been quite dry before it had started swelling, and any normal swelling would have cracked it. It wasn’t cracked. It was smooth and unbroken, as if it had been poured in a hump originally. I could fool Jock, but I couldn’t fool myself. There was something strange going on here. Very strange, hmmm?
The hump was two feet high when I figured I had better let Jock go. I had managed to keep him out of the cellar, but sooner or later he would see it, and even he would start to wonder, and to talk about it. I gave him a bonus and sent him on a long vacation. Then I got some tools and attacked the mound.
My arms were sore, and I had blunted two picks and broken the handle on a third, before I gave in and rented a jackhammer. The guy at the rental place was pretty annoyed when I took it back with all the blades twisted and broken. He seemed determined to give me a hard time.
“Damn it, mister, who’s going to pay to replace these blades? You’re supposed to return stuff in good condition, didn’t you read the rental form?”
“My good man, aren’t you familiar with the law of implied warranty of fitness?” I asked him. Of course I didn’t know anything about it either, but I figured if I came on sounding like a lawyer he’d back down, and he did. I went home trying to figure out what to do next. I toyed with the idea of dynamite, but I was afraid of what it would do to the rest of the house. Besides which, I didn’t want to try explaining an explosion to the police.
It was a month after that I had to let the rest of the servants go. The mound in the cellar had grown so tall it was beginning to press up on the dining room floor. Servants will talk. Even the ones who wouldn’t dare normally, the ones you have a tight rein on. At that point, I was alone in the house—well, if you don’t count Thalia. I had to do my own cooking, which is pretty awful, and I had to eat in the kitchen because the dining room was becoming unusable.
No more charming dinner parties in the dining room. Bye, bye, dining room. We used to have such nice
parties, and Thalia was a wonderful hostess. We’d invite a lot of my business associates, and I’m sure a lot of business was due to those parties. But we haven’t had a party in months, not since Thalia got sick.
The dining room floor lasted a week, bulging and creaking and cracking, before the mound finally broke through. Sort of like an egg hatching, it was, yes. Except the top of the mound was smooth and round, it was almost like an egg hatching out of another egg. Happy Easter!
Pardon me, it isn’t Easter, is it? No. But I seem to get a little confused lately. I’m going to have to ask Thalia what the date is. No, that’s right, I killed her, didn’t I, yes?
Whatever it is, it has been growing faster now, because it only took another week to get to the dining room ceiling. It was changing shape, too. It was no longer a smooth ovoid, it was beginning to take on the shape of a human body, a female body. It was beginning to look a bit like Thalia. Not Thalia as she was when she died, you understand, all wasted away, but Thalia as she was before I started to poison her. She was quite attractive, but she was large, solid. What some would call a statuesque woman. Now the mound was becoming a womanesque statue, right? Isn’t that funny? Ha, ha, ha, ha!
I was beginning to regret my earlier decision not to try dynamite, and considered the idea again. When I checked in the cellar, the bottom had gotten smaller and thinner, just like a woman’s ankles. Dynamite might just possibly crack it. Or it might not, and the whole house would come tumbling down, and Jill come tumbling after! Excuse me, sometimes it’s hard to concentrate.
The dining room ceiling only lasted a few hours once the top of the, well, the statue, reached it. I began to have nightmares about this thing growing, growing, up to the sky, bursting through the roof for all to see, and all I did was plant three magic beans in the cellar. No, that’s not right. I planted Thalia in the cellar, and now she’s growing like a beanstalk.
Worlds Away and Worlds Aweird Page 15