Grimm Memorials

by R. Patrick Gates

  What she saw next paralyzed her. The old woman she had seen driving the funny black station wagon was on all fours in the middle of a big red circle with a star in it at the foot of the altar. The woman was naked, her flabby wrinkled body covered with strange squiggly lines and symbols drawn in the same red color as the circle and star on the floor. The talking, moaning, and singing were all coming from her open mouth, but Margaret hardly noticed. Her eyes were riveted to the huge black dog mounting the old lady from behind.

  Margaret screamed and the dog and the old lady looked at her. Her grip on the windowsill slipped and she fell hard on her rump on the ground below the window. Instantly, she was on her feet and running for home.

  This is just like a fairy tale, Jennifer thought, as she approached the gingerbread house. The closer she got the more details she noticed: The roof was coated with a thick layer of buttercream frosting; the gingerbread walls were trimmed with chocolate icing; the windows were of clear rock candy and the front door was made of pure milk chocolate. Around the cottage ran a candy-cane fence. The walkway that started at the fence's front gate and went to the front door was made of chocolate chip cookies.

  This is crazy, Jennifer thought. This is like something Jackie would make up. She looked around, past the house, at the surrounding area. Everything was shrouded in fog. Like looking through a steamed-up windshield, the area in front of her, including the fence, yard, and cottage, was clear, everything else was fogged up.

  Where's the road, Jen wondered, and the big house? "This is like a weird dream," she mumbled aloud, touching her face to be sure she was awake. A scary thought suddenly crossed her mind: if this wasn't a dream, if this was real, then maybe Margaret's story about a witch was real. In the fairy tale a wicked old witch who ate children lived in the gingerbread house in the woods; why not in this one?

  Looking at the cottage in a new light, Jen decided she didn't want to go any closer. She just wanted to get out of there. She took a step back, then turned around to go back the way she'd come. There was nothing but fog behind hera wall of impenetrable fog, and it was pressing in on her, blowing in her face, seeping into her nostrils and mouth, filling her lungs, her brain, until she forgot her fear and turned back to the gingerbread house.

  She went through the gate and up the cookie walk to the front door. She raised her hand as if to knock, but instead broke a piece of chocolate off the door and ate it.

  "Nibble, nibble, gnaw. Who is nibbling at my little house?" a soft voice cried from within.

  Jen let out an intoxicated giggle. "The wind, the wind; the heaven-born wind," she answered.

  Footsteps approached from inside and the chocolate door swung open.

  Eleanor rushed to the window, Mephisto hot on her heels, and watched Margaret run down the road, disappearing around the bend. Mephisto lunged for the window, desiring to give chase, but Eleanor grabbed his collar, pulling him back. She closed the window. There was a better way to take care of that little troublemaker-letting Mephisto run her down now would only make a bad mistake worse.

  Eleanor was worried. She hadn't known Margaret was at the window until she'd heard her scream. She hadn't heard her thoughts, hadn't heard her approach. Something had gone wrong with the Machine.

  Eleanor had been well aware of Jennifer, and now, as she turned away from the window, she realized the two girls must have come together. Why had the Machine picked up one and not the other? It had created a splendid lure for the Nailer girl, who was an integral part of Eleanor's plans. She had watched it all unfold in her mind like a movie as she was performing the Ritual of Defilement with Mephisto. She still saw it in her mind's eye as Jennifer approached the back door, a blank look on her face.

  Suddenly, for one awful moment, everything went black in Eleanor's head. She heard no thoughts, had no thoughts of her own, saw no workings of the Machine: There was no Machine. White light pulsed in her head while a wild, rampaging pain broke across her chest like a huge wave, staggering her. She was on the verge of collapse when, like a merry-go-round that ends one song and begins another, the Machine returned, cranking up again. The lights stopped flashing in Eleanor's mind, the pain diminished, and the calliope continued.

  Jennifer was at the back door. Eleanor had no time to worry about Margaret now. She'd have to hope that having made eye contact with her was enough. If it was, the girl would forget; either way, Eleanor would take care of it later. She rushed out of the chapel, just closing the door behind her before Mephisto could follow, and hurried, her flat, veiny breasts slapping against her belly, to the kitchen.

  Jennifer was picking a piece of imaginary chocolate from the door and eating it. Out of breath and gasping, Eleanor spoke the words she'd heard so many times as a child when listening to her mother tell the story of Hansel and Gretel, her favorite fairy tale. The girl, almost completely in the Machine's control now, giggled out the correct response and Eleanor opened the door.

  "Grandma!" Jennifer cried with delight and rushed into Eleanor's naked embrace.

  Margaret ran until she could no longer draw a breath to power her flight. She had reached the path but could go no farther without stopping to catch her wind. She collapsed against a mossy mound by a tall oak tree and gulped air into her hungry lungs. She looked fearfully back at the road, which was still in view behind her. She dragged herself out of sight to the other side of the tree.

  What am I running from?

  The thought shot into her head, and like a student who knows the answer on a test but blanks out when asked it, she couldn't remember.

  And where is Jennifer?

  She couldn't answer that either. Something came to her: Jennifer had been playing games, trying to scare her. That was why she was afraid; Jennifer must be chasing her.

  What are we doing in the woods?

  She had no idea. Margaret didn't like this feeling. She felt the way she did upon waking from a nightmare, only she hadn't been sleeping. Not wanting to see if Jennifer was really chasing her, Margaret leapt to her feet and sprinted all the way down the path to her house.

  Jackie was sitting in front of the television watching "The Real Ghostbusters" cartoons when he saw Jen in the hall, on her way upstairs. Jumping up, he followed her to their room.

  "What happened?" Jackie asked, as soon as the door was closed. Jennifer didn't answer. She sat on her bed, staring at the ring her grandmother had given her for her seventh birthday.

  "Jen? What happened?" Jackie repeated, sitting on the other side of her bed.

  Jennifer stirred and seemed startled, like one awakened from a daydream. "What?" she asked, a slight frown upon her face.

  "What happened? In the woods? With Margaret?" Jackie asked sarcastically.

  "Oh," Jen said softly, and looked again at the ring on her finger. "Nothing," she replied.

  "What do you mean, nothing?" Jackie nearly exploded.

  Jennifer gave him a disdainful look. "I mean, nothing. She was lying. Now quit bugging me ""

  "Oh," Jackie said. He gave a loud, immense sigh of relief. All the while Jen and Margaret had been gone he had told himself just that, over and over again. He was very glad to be proven correct. He gave Jennifer a curious look she was staring at her ring again-then shrugged his shoulders. It was time for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and he never missed them if he could help it.

  When Jackie was gone, Jennifer went to the window and looked out at the forest. Grandma is back and she's all better, she thought with excitement. It was incredible, but true. Grandma had explained it all so well; how Diane and Steve had convinced a doctor that she was senile with Alzheimer's disease so they could put her away. But she had escaped and followed them, always watching Jen and Jackie to be sure they were safe. She'd had the gingerbread house in the woods built special just for them-a secret magical place where they could escape from their uncaring parents. It all seemed feasible to Jennifer; all believable because deep down inside she wanted to believe it more than anything. She never once though
t about the times she had visited Grammy in the nursing home, only to find her drooling and staring into space. She didn't remember how, the last time she'd seen her, Grammy was so bad she didn't know who Jen was. And the impossibility of a house actually being constructed of gingerbread and candy didn't matter, either. Grandma had said it was true, so it was. When Jennifer had looked into Grandma's enormous eyes, she had accepted everything, and known exactly what she must do.

  CHAPTER 18

  Curly locks, Curly locks, wilt thou be mine?

  An hour after her daughter left, when "General Hospital" was over and the carrot cake gone, Judy Eames roused herself from the living room couch and went to the back door, peering out for Margaret. She pushed the door open and leaned out into the cold air, searching the backyard and edge of the woods for her daughter. When she called her, she was surprised to hear an answer from upstairs. Judy went up to her room and found her lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

  "I didn't hear you come in," Judy exclaimed. "When did you get home?"

  "Awhile ago," Margaret answered listlessly, not looking at her mother.

  "Do you feel okay, hon?" Judy asked. She placed the back of her hand against Margaret's forehead, checking for fever and found none.

  "Yeah," Margaret answered, sliding her head out from under her mother's hand.

  "Are you tired?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay, hon. You take a nap before supper" Judy started out of the room, then stopped. "Oh, how was Jennifer's new doll?"

  "What?" Margaret looked confused.

  "Jen's new doll; the one you went over there to see"

  "Oh yeah. It was nice," Margaret lied, her voice a monotone. She had no idea what her mother was talking about. She agreed with her only to get rid of her. All she wanted to do was sleep. But when her mother was gone, Margaret couldn't sleep. The rest of the afternoon she lay as she was, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, sometimes at the wall. When her mother peeked in to check on her, Margaret closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, but then opened them again, resuming her staring when she was alone. She moved again only to answer her mother's call for supper.

  Throughout dinner, she played with her food, moving it around her plate with no apparent interest in eating it. She paid attention to her parent's conversation only when her father spoke of the new patrol dogs the campus police had just bought. The mention of dogs sparked something in her; some memory she couldn't quite grasp. Her father noticed it was the only time she looked her old self and tried to follow up on it.

  "So where's Puffin tonight, Margy? I haven't seen her around," he said, referring to Margaret's orange cat.

  "I don't know," Margaret answered dully, losing interest again as soon as the subject was changed. "I'll go look for her later."

  "Honey," Judy said with concern, "if you're done, why don't you go right back to bed. I'll bring up some aspirins for you"

  "What's wrong with her?" Roger asked when Margaret had gone upstairs.

  "I think she's coming down with something," Judy said. She got up from the table, placed her dish in the sink, and took a bottle of aspirin from the cabinet. After pouring a glass of milk, she took it and the aspirins up to her daughter.

  Roger Eames finished his dish of shepherd's pie and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove. He made a mental note to look in on his daughter before going to bed. He would later fall asleep during the eleven o'clock news, wake during the weather, and go to bed, forgetting to look in on his daughter. He would regret it the rest of his days because dinner was the last time he would see her alive.

  The brat will remember and tell someone.

  Edmund was standing at the top of the crematorium stairs. Eleanor had just finished feeding and drugging the boys in the cage and was carrying the empty tray back to the kitchen. She ignored the ghost of her brother.

  She'll tell and they'll come to investigate. Then you'll join me.

  Eleanor climbed the stairs, walking right through the apparition blocking her way. A chill swept over her and a sinister chuckling rang in her ears, but she did her best to ignore it, telling herself it was the wind because Edmund was dead and the dead stayed dead.

  Though she had probed Margaret's mind after finishing with Jennifer, and found that she remembered nothing, she couldn't be sure that would last. Edmund's warning (It's not Edmund, it's your guilty conscience, she chastised herself again) had raised serious doubts. No, she decided, it was too risky; something would have to be done.

  She needed another sacrifice for the next ritual and, though ideally it should be a newborn infant, any prepubescent innocent would suffice. Besides this would save her the trouble of hunting for an infant, which would have been difficult and time-consuming. With her health and the Machine failing her, she decided to go for the bird in the hand and take care of two problems at once. She didn't like taking another child so close to her house and so soon after having snared Jerry Hall, but it couldn't be helped. Besides, Halloween and the Harvest of Dead Souls, when she would perform the sixth and final sacrifice for Samhain, was only two weeks away. She'd just have to gamble that the Machine could keep suspicion away from her that long. After that, she didn't care.

  She went into the kitchen, feeling her way in the darkness, and went to the back door. She opened it and went out into the cold night. Mephisto whimpered from his tether at the oak tree, but she ignored him. She stood at the cemetery gate, facing in the general direction of Dorsey Lane and Margaret's house. The clear fall sky was studded with stars and pink around the edges, heralding the coming dawn. Eleanor looked at the sky and slowly raised her arms in a beckoning gesture.

  "Curly locks, Curly locks, wilt thou be mine?" she said softly and closed her eyes.

  Margaret woke at 5:30 A.M., a half hour after her father left for work and a half hour before her mother's alarm would go off and she would rise to get Margaret ready for school. A sound woke Margaret. She sat up in bed, listening for it again. A dog barked far away. In a mad rush of images she remembered everything she had seen through the window of the house in the woods yesterday afternoon. That was the last thing she could remember. Since then she'd felt as though she'd been sleepwalking with no knowledge of what she'd done or where she'd gone while asleep.

  With the memories came another sound: a cat's frantic meowing. Puffin!

  Margaret threw the covers back and swung her legs out. She glanced quickly around the room for her cat, who usually slept on her bed. Pufffin was gone. The cat's cry came again from outside, followed by the dog's angry barking.

  That horrible dog is after Puffin, Margaret thought frantically. As quickly as possible, she put on her jeans, a sweatshirt, socks and sneakers, and ran out of the house.

  She ran headlong over the dark path behind her house and the Nailers'. She slowed her speed only when the path turned into the thick of the woods and the gray light of dawn was swallowed by the trees hanging on to the shadows of the night. Margaret stumbled several times and fell once, landing painfully on her knees. When she pushed through the overgrown bushes where the path intersected with the dirt road, one of the branches left a nasty scratch across her left cheek.

  She paused in the middle of the road, her eyes slowly adjusting to the near darkness as she checked in both directions for Puffin. There was no sign of her. From the direction of Grimm Memorials the sound of barking followed by a strangled mewling, spurred Margaret on. As she ran, what she'd seen the old woman and the dog doing ran through her mind again.

  Though Margaret couldn't quite comprehend what it was that the old woman and her dog had been doing, she knew it was a had thing. They had been naked and that made it ten times worse than a bad thing. She reasoned frightfully that if the dog could do such a bad thing to that old lady, then what might it do to poor Puffin? A chill ran down her spine at the possibilities.

  The dog's barking became a horrible snarling and growling and the cat's pathetic cries could no longer be heard. As she rounded the ben
d in the road and came into view of the house, Margaret realized that the sounds were coming from behind the house. She could just imagine poor Puffin up a tree, the ferocious dog lunging up at her, or worse.

  I have to save her! That thought overcame her fear at being so close to the house and she ran up the drive to it and started around, being very careful not to look into any of the windows.

  The backyard was made up of two sections; the front part consisted of a scraggly, crabgrass-infested lawn that stretched between the house and an old, rusted, wrought-iron fence that surrounded the second section-an ancient, overgrown ceme tery. Thin old tombstones, sculpted headstones, and simple stone crosses stood, some crooked, some nearly hidden by the long grass that was testimony to the graveyard's long disuse. The gate hung at a skewed angle at the cemetery's entrance. A worn dirt path ran from the gate across the yard to a screen door at the back of the house. To the far right of the cemetery, an old run-down barn was being swallowed by the encroaching forest.

  Margaret peered cautiously around the corner of the house, surveying the yard and cemetery. Puffin was nowhere in sight. On the far side of the cemetery, near the other corner of the house, the huge black dog was tied by a frayed rope to a tall, leaning oak tree. The dog was lunging frantically against its leash, snarling and trying to get at something in the tall grass near the cemetery fence.

  "Puffin!" Margaret breathed anxiously. In a sudden fit of motherly concern, not caring whether she'd be seen from the house, nor whether the ferocious dog might break free, Margaret ran across the backyard determined to save her cat.

  "Little girl!"

  The shrill voice came from behind her, followed by the squeak and slam of the screen door opening and closing. Margaret stopped in her tracks and whirled around. The old woman she'd seen through the window was walking toward her.

  At first, Margaret was frightened. She nearly ran from the old lady, but, as the woman came closer, Margaret realized there was something different about the old woman. It wasn't just that she now had clothes on-a long, neck-to-ankles dress and high black orthopedic shoes-she actually looked changed, not ugly or threatening the way she had when Margaret had spied on her through the window. Now her face was cherubic, red-checked and smiling. Her pure white hair had a cloudlike softness to it. Her blue eyes, slightly magnified behind a thick-lensed pair of glasses made her look owlish and cute. Margaret was immediately disarmed.