Grimm Memorials

by R. Patrick Gates

  Maybe it's not the same lady. The thought insinuated itself in her mind as invisibly as a parasite. Maybe I didn't see what I thought I saw, crawled in right behind it.

  "Did you lose a cat, little girl?" The old woman asked. Her voice was high-pitched, squeaky and friendly.

  "Yes, ma'am. Did you see it?" Margaret blurted out.

  "Oh yes," the woman chuckled sweetly. "She's in my kitchen having a bowl of milk. She went too close to my dog and I got worried. Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard is bare, you know."

  Margaret giggled. She liked this old lady. The woman made her feel warm.

  "Come see," the woman coaxed, motioning for Margaret to follow her inside. "Your kitty likes my milk, but Old Mother Hubbard's poor dog needs a bone" When Margaret came closer, the old woman put her arm around her shoulder. "So you're Margaret," she said softly.

  "Yes," Margaret replied, but her voice sounded faraway. When the old woman touched her, the back of her head tingled warmly. She exhaled and forgot to inhale for several seconds. Her mouth became dry and she felt light headed. She smiled sleepily and let herself be led inside.

  The old woman steered Margaret to a seat at the kitchen table, then went to the cabinets over the sink. As soon as the old woman's hand was no longer touching her, Margaret's head cleared a little and her breathing returned to normal. She looked around the room for Puffin but didn't see her. Nor could she see any bowl of milk in the room.

  "Where's my cat?" Margaret asked politely.

  "She's around here somewhere, probably off exploring my house. Cats are curious, you know," the old woman said reassuringly. She opened the cabinets and took out two clay mugs. "Curiosity killed the cat, you know. Would you like some cocoa?"

  Margaret nodded. "But where's the bowl of milk you gave her?" she asked.

  "It's right there" The old woman pointed to a half-full bowl near the stove. Margaret could have sworn there was no bowl there when she had looked a moment ago.

  "Cocoa and cookies for breakfast, how does that sound?" the old woman asked and answered herself "Mmm, good" She opened a large ceramic pot on the counter and scooped cocoa into the mugs. She carried them to the stove where she put them down and lit the gas burner under a large cast-iron teakettle. The gas ignited with a quick sound, like air being sucked through a rolled tongue. The old woman looked at Margaret and winked.

  Margaret smiled back politely. She had obviously been wrong about this woman and had nothing to fear from her, but now all she wanted was her cat. Outside the dog continued to snarl and bark ferociously. Margaret didn't like the sound of it.

  "I've seen you spying on my house," the old woman said in the same sweet tone she might use to say she had seen Margaret in church. The old woman crossed to the table and sat opposite Margaret. "You were peeking in my window yesterday, weren't you?" Her eyes seemed to be pushing from behind the thick lenses at Margaret, and she felt another wave of hot numbness slide over her scalp.

  "What did you see when you looked in my window, Margaret?" The woman's voice was soft and purring.

  Margaret tried to think hard, but for the life of her she couldn't remember what she had seen. Even the dog's wild barking outside couldn't jog her memory. "I ... I don't know," Margaret mumbled. The old woman's eyes started to recede. "Nothing, I guess," Margaret added.

  The old woman smiled. "That's good" she cooed. She rose from the table and went back to the stove, removing the kettle from the burner and pouring steaming water into the mugs. "Let's have our cocoa"

  "Did you know Jerry Hall?" Margaret blurted out. She didn't know why she had asked that.

  "The little boy who used to live at the end of the lane? Oh, yes. We became good friends," she said happily, as she replaced the kettle on the stove.

  "Jerry told me something about you" Margaret again spoke before she knew what she was doing.

  The old woman looked slowly over her shoulder at Margaret and gave her a small, sly smile. "Yes?" she asked, turning and coming to the table with a mug in each hand.

  Though goosebumps had risen on her arms, her bowels felt suddenly liquid, and she knew she shouldn't go on, Margaret found herself speaking words as though compelled to. "He told me you were a ... a witch!"

  The old woman smiled, her eyes twinkling merrily, and chuckled. Margaret felt as though a great weight had just slid from her shoulders. What had she been afraid of? She reached out and took the offered mug with both hands. "That's silly, I guess," she added, embarrassed. She brought the mug to her lips, blowing at its contents the way she always did before drinking something hot.

  "Oh no, it's not really," the old woman said. She placed her mug on the table and stepped to Margaret's side. "It's true," she said with that same merry chuckle to her voice.

  The words hit home as Margaret took a tentative sip from the mug. Something tickled her lips and she felt a hair in her mouth. She coughed and pulled the mug back, looking into it. The mug wasn't filled with piping hot cocoa. Swimming in the steamy, dark red water were big clumps of orange fur.

  The old woman's chuckling exploded into a shrieking cackle. Margaret looked up at her and gasped. In her hand, holding it by the bloody scruff of its neck, was Puffin, her bleeding pink body completely skinned of fur. As Margaret's gasp swelled into a scream, the old woman's other hand shot out and clamped on her throat cutting off her scream and her breathing.

  "Now," the old woman wheezed, her foul breath washing over Margaret's face, "you're mine!"

  In the cold gray light of morning, Mephisto watched expectantly as Eleanor approached him. "Mother Hubbard's brought her poor dog a bone," she said, as though talking to a baby, and threw Margaret's dead cat to the ravenous canine. She stood and watched for several minutes, enjoying the sight and slobbering, crunching sounds of Mephisto's feast.

  At six o'clock, the alarm went off at Judy Eames's bedside and buzzed until it exhausted itself and fell quiet. Judy slept on. It wasn't until 9 A.M. that the ringing of the telephone would finally wake her. It was the nursery school where she worked, calling to see if she was coming in. She was an hour late. Judy groggily told them she couldn't make it, her daughter was sick, and hung up the phone. She stared at the clock on the nightstand, wondering if Roger, knowing she would be staying home with Margaret, had turned off the alarm. But when she checked it, she found the alarm button was still on and the alarm had wound down.

  How did I sleep through the alarm? she wondered. She had never done that. She tried to get out of bed, but flopped back exhausted. The thought that she was coming down with whatever had put Margaret under the weather yesterday crossed her mind, explaining her oversleeping. She certainly felt like the proverbial truck had hit her.

  What about Margaret? she worried suddenly. If she felt anything like Judy, then the poor kid was probably still sleeping. Judy just hoped Roger had checked on her before he left for work, but even so it was time for her to take some aspirin, have her temperature checked, and eat some breakfast.

  She forced herself out of bed, pulled on her robe, and staggered out of the bedroom and down the hall to Margaret's room. She was surprised to see her daughter's bed empty, but upon further thought figured she must have had a twentyfour-hour bug.

  Sure, now she's given it to me, she smirked. It was typical of Margaret, even if she was still feeling a little under the weather, not to want to miss school. She'd have to be practically dying to want to stay home. Still, with all that had been going on in Northwood lately, Judy worried that she had gotten off all right. She decided to call the school to check on her when the phone rang.

  "Hello, Mrs. Eames. This is Pioneer Regional checking our absentees. Is Margaret home sick today?"

  Judy nearly collapsed. Her worst fear had just come true: Her daughter was missing.

  CHAPTER 19

  I'll tell you a story ...

  The sunlight was blinding as Jennifer walked out of the school building at afternoon recess, but she barely blinked. She'd been waiting all day for afternoon recess
and it had seemed to take forever to get here. She walked with purpose across the yard, ignoring the group of girls from her class who were sneaking down to the football field to have a butt. In the past, she had accompanied them, but today she had something more important to do-an errand for Grandma.

  She pushed through the third-grade horde and made her way to the far end of the playground where the first-graders played on the swings, seesaw, and jungle gym. She kept her eyes peeled for Jackie and saw him playing Hacky-Sack with a group of boys near the first-grade entrance to the building. She walked in the opposite direction, skirting the fence to be sure he didn't see her. Near the gate, behind the jungle gym, she found who she was looking for.

  He was a small first-grader, even smaller than Jackie. He was standing alone by the fence, watching two boys flip for baseball cards, when Jennifer approached him and spoke to him. He was a shy boy and shrank from her at first. Something about her eyes stopped him, drew him back. Her voice was strange, too, rhythmic, like the drumming of the rain on a rooftop.

  As she came close and put her arm around his shoulder, he realized she was telling him a story.

  There were two tall policemen, wearing dark glasses, waiting for Jackie and Jennifer at the bus stop when they got home. They identified themselves as being from the sheriff's department and asked the two Nailer children several questions concerning the last time they had seen Margaret Eames and whether they had seen her that morning on the bus or at the bus stop.

  Jennifer told the officers of playing in the surrounding woods with Margaret after school the day before, adding that neither she nor Jackie had seen her since. Jackie kept quiet, intimidated by the sheriff's men, and nodded along with Jen's account. He gave her a strange look when one of the officers asked what they were doing in the woods and Jen replied, "Just playing."

  When the two men finished with their questions, one of them went back to the Eames' house, which had two sheriff's department cruisers in the driveway, while the other one walked them to their house.

  "Has something happened to Margaret?" Jackie asked as they walked along.

  "Nothing for you to worry about, son," the officer replied with a smile.

  Jackie opened his mouth to speak again, but Jennifer pinched his arm, making him yelp. The officer looked at them with mild reproval and led them up their driveway to their front door. He knocked several times and rang the doorbell twice in growing annoyance before a sleepy-eyed Diane Nailer, dressed in a rumpled neck-to-toe flannel nightgown, answered the door.

  The officer took one look at Diane's enormous stomach and yawning mouth and his annoyance quickly changed to embarrassment. Nobody had told him she was pregnant. "Uh, sorry to wake you, ma'am. We just wanted to make sure your kids got home okay." Diane yawned again and nodded, opening the door. Jackie and Jennifer went inside and Diane closed the door on the officer without another word.

  As the officer walked away, he thought she had been rather indifferent. He knew that Deputy Sheriff Vitelli had questioned her earlier in the day, so she knew about the disappearance of the Eames girl, but now she hadn't asked about it. To him that seemed strange; he thought she would at least want to know if there were any more news about the girl. He'd want to know if a kid on his street, a playmate of his daughter's, had disappeared, but she had seemed not to care.

  Maybe she hadn't said or asked anything so as not to alarm her children, he reasoned. That certainly made sense; he'd had to stop talking at home about the several disappearances of children in the area because his own kids were scared to death. Satisfied with that explanation, the officer went back to the Eameses' house.

  "What happened to Margaret, Mom?" Jackie asked as he took off his coat. She was starting up the stairs, intent on returning to bed. Jennifer was in the kitchen with her head in the refrigerator.

  "Who knows?" his mother groused. "The little brat probably ran away." She continued up the stairs and went into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Jackie went into the kitchen where Jen, still wearing her coat, was downing a glass of milk. "Jen, how come you didn't tell that guy about the witch Margaret took you to see yesterday?"

  "What are you, crazy? There was no witch. You think I want people to say I'm as weird as you are?"

  "Mom said that Margaret ran away."

  Jen laughed sarcastically.

  "What?" Jackie asked.

  "If you believe that then you're dumber than I thought" She put her empty glass in the sink and headed for the back door.

  "What do you mean? Where are you going?" Jackie asked, following her.

  "I'm going out" Jen paused at the door.

  "Where?"

  "In the woods" Jen said and went out the door.

  Jackie jumped, catching the screen door before it could close. "Hey! What happened to Margaret?" he yelled at Jen's back. She either didn't hear him, or ignored him, and continued into the field and the woods.

  Jennifer sat on a tree stump at the edge of a path on the other side of the road from the one that ran behind her house. Grandma had shown her this path, which ran parallel to the river behind the row of Colonial houses on Route 47, yesterday. Further on, the path dipped through a wall of bushes and hanging vines and came out on the beautiful glen where Grandma's gingerbread house was. Jen couldn't wait to go back there, but she had something to do first-something for Grandma.

  Sitting there, waiting, Jennifer marvelled again at how wonderful it was to have her grandmother back. Now she didn't care whether her mother or Steve seemed indifferent and uncaring. Grandma would always be there.

  The sound of voices from down the path brought her to her feet. She could just see the tops of three, then four, small heads three brown-haired and one red-bobbing along the path between a tangle of blueberry bushes. The little boy she'd told the story to at recess was in the lead and he had brought some friends just as Jen had told him to. Jennifer smiled; Grandma would be pleased.

  "Is this the bozo who told you that nutty story?" the red haired boy asked contemptuously of Jen's small friend when they reached her. The latter nodded shyly.

  The redhead turned on Jen. "What are you, some kind of weirdo? Why'd you tell my brother that Goldilocks and the Three Bears live in these woods?"

  Jennifer grinned slowly, looking at each boy in turn, lastly fixing her gaze on the redhead. "Because it's true," she said convincingly.

  "You're loony tunes, baby," the redhead said, smirking. The other boys, except for his brother, giggled.

  "And what's your name?" Jen asked, stepping closer and bending to the redhead's eye level.

  He stared right back at her, undaunted. "I'm Jimmy's brother," he said, indicating the boy from recess, "Jeff."

  "Well, Jeff," Jennifer said, straightening and glancing at the others, "how would you like to see for yourself where Goldilocks and the Three Bears live? I can show you"

  The other boys looked at each other, wide-eyed. Here was an impressive boast and they looked to Jeff, their leader, for his reaction.

  For the first time Jeff seemed unsure of himself. "You're crazy, or you're putting us on," he said. He looked around at his brother and friends for agreement, but got none. "This is some stupid joke, right?"

  "Why don't you follow me and find out for yourself?" Jen replied. She turned and started up the path, not looking around to see if they were following her. Jimmy was the first to, after a triumphant I-told-you-so look at his older brother. The other two boys followed him. Reluctantly, redheaded Jeff, the skeptic, brought up the rear.

  The path went through the same boggy floodplain Jen had struggled through prior to discovering Grandma's house. The narrow path was muddy and pockmarked with puddles. Jen and the four boys made their way carefully, watching where they were stepping and not talking except for an occa sional griping remark from Jeff about the stupidity of the venture.

  As they approached the cluster of hanging vines that marked the entrance to Grandma's glen, Jeff stopped and refused to go on.
"This is a wild-goose chase," he said petulantly. "Come on, you guys, let's go home. She's just pulling our legs."

  The boys looked at each other but no one moved.

  "Okay. You jerks can follow her and get all muddy out here, but I'm going. And Jimmy, Ma's gonna kill you when she sees that you wrecked your new sneakers"

  Jimmy looked down at his mud-caked Nikes and frowned. The other boys followed suit, wondering what their own mothers would say about their muddy feet.

  Moving quickly, Jennifer went back to Jeff, stepping in front of him, blocking his way. "But, Jeff," she said soothingly, "it's just ahead. You can't turn back now." As she spoke to him, she placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it lightly. The boy stiffened suddenly as if a mild electrical shock had just coursed through his body. He stared into Jen's hazel eyes and felt his mind go numbingly cold. His head nodded in agreement as if it were disconnected from his body and controlled by someone else, like the bobbing head of a marionette on a string.

  "Let's go on," Jennifer said softly. She turned and continued on the path. Jeff followed on her heels without a glance around at his brother and his buddies. They looked at each other, a glance of uncertainty passed between them at Jeff's sudden change of heart, then followed also.

  The house was just as Jennifer had described it to Jimmy at school: long and squat with a bulky, heavy thatched roof on top, its long straw spilling over the sides almost to the ground. At the closest end, a great stone chimney climbed the side of the house, jutting well above the thatched roof. From it, a steady stream of gray smoke rose and drifted lazily away through the treetops. At the front of the house was a small oval wooden door with a tiny round window in it. On either side of the door, nearly hidden by the overhanging roof straw, were two more small round windows.