"Stop it!" Mark shouted loudly, clamping his hands over his ears. Her presence in his head was making him ill. The room began to spin as Rebecca walked over to him. She placed a hand on his crotch and leaned close to him. He heard a thick snuffling noise and realized she was sniffing him.
"Fe, fi, fo, fum," she mumbled close to his face. Her breath smelled like rotten fish and sour cabbage. Mark started to back away from her but she reached out and grabbed his arm.
He looked at her hand; it was the hand of an adult, with long boney fingers ending in dirty, sharp nails. The skin of her hand was a mottled brown with veins and tendons showing through. Her knuckles were wrinkled, swollen knobs.
"He's not tainted yet, but he's close," Rebecca said to Mr. Nailer.
Mark's throat dried up and he choked on a swallow. Rebecca's soft white arm was growing to match her hand. The wrist and forearm stretched and kept stretching. Her skin turned a rough brown covered with rows of tiny, scaly wrinkles. Age spots blossomed like dead flowers between the wrinkles. The flesh under her upper arm and elbow sagged loosely like empty sacks. Her gnarled hand tightened on him as he staggered back, fighting to get away, trying not to look at what was happening to the rest of her body but unable to help it.
It was swelling. With gushing, wet snapping sounds her body was swelling, inflating. Her legs cracked and grew, pushing her torso up a foot. Her stomach bulged and squished, the skin rippling, puckering, and becoming rumpled with cellulite. Her rib cage danced against her tightly stretched skin like xylophone bars. Her breasts ballooned, the nipples erupting like tiny novas to envelop the entire end of each breast. With a tight hissing sound, her breasts began to deflate, wrinkling down into long, flattened slabs that looked a little like half-empty water bottles. Her neck, too, vibrated with growth, pushing her head up several inches. Its skin crawled with change; scars, wrinkles, age spots, and blemishes flourished there. A double chin grew, hanging under her jaw, and another one grew below it. The chins, and her entire neck, began to shrivel like the neck of a turkey.
Mark's mouth opened and his brain signalled scream to his vocal cords, but his voice had fled in terror. He tried to look away, but his neck wouldn't turn. His eyes remained clamped on the grotesquely changing Rebecca. She now towered over him. As bad as the changes had been to her body, the effects on her face were more horrible.
Her cherubic, wholesome skin disappeared, pimpling and pulsating until it resembled rubber being stretched a hundred different ways. Her slightly pouting, pink lips cracked, grew longer and thinner and darkened to a deep purple. Two long white hairs and one black one grew out of the end of her chin. A mole popped out on her cheek and sprouted a long, curly, black and white hair. Her cute, upturned nose, seemed to slide toward him, growing long and thin, the nostrils flaring large and wide. Her fine blonde eyebrows burst into growth like dried brush into flames. Her wavy, long blonde hair curled gray then white, as though a wave of bleach were passing over her head. It became stringy. It hung over her forehead in disarray to her eyes, which had once been big and blue but now became squinty and black and milky with age, the skin around them puffing and wrinkling.
Rebecca was gone. She had evolved into an ancient hag whose grip on his arm was so tight he began to whimper. She dragged him across the room to the door marked Crematorium. Mark looked desperately back at Mr. Nailer for help, but he was turning away, going out the door as if nothing were wrong.
"No!" Mark screamed, his voice returning in panic. "No! No! No!" he continued screaming as the old hag dragged him through the crematorium door. He tried to grab at the door knob and jamb, but she pulled him off them and down the stairs. He bounced from step to step, on first his side, then his back, as he tried to squirm away. She held on to him relentlessly.
At the bottom of the stairs, she pulled him through another doorway into a candle-lit room and across a stone floor. He didn't have a chance to look around. She grabbed his head by his ears and drew his face close to hers. Her breath reeked like something dead, but he didn't smell it for long. Her eyes enveloped him and he disappeared into the ocean of her mind like a wrecked ship going down. The world became varying shades of green and gray before blackness settled in.
CHAPTER 29
Billy, Billy, come and play ...
Eleanor bustled out of the house, her left leg barely limping, and got in the hearse. The sun was dipping behind the browning leaves, giving them a momentary flash of their former autumnal beauty. There was an hour of daylight left at least, but that couldn't be helped. She'd decided to strike while she felt good. If she waited until darkness, which was the safest time, she might not be conscious or strong enough. Tomorrow was Samhain. She had to be ready. If she missed it, she was dead.
She was feeling a rare interlude of relative freedom from pain the constant squeezing of her heart was reduced to steady eruptions of sour, flaming heartburn and a tug every few minutes. The Machine was running strongly again, though still not completely up to peak. But it was good enough to get her to tomorrow night and the final ritual. After that, she'd have plenty of time to rest and let the Machine regain its former splendor.
"Three more to go," she whispered to herself as she backed the hearse out from the side of the house and onto the road.
Unlike the other night, when she'd driven at random until she'd discovered Jason Grakopolous watching TV, she knew exactly where she was going now. When she was driving home the other night with her catch neatly stashed away in a coffin in the back, she had picked up the dreams of a small boy like a stray radio signal. She was able to pinpoint it and remembered it. She drove there now.
The house was in an ideal location. It was in a neighborhood in Deerfield where the houses were large and spread apart. The backyards all bordered on the densely wooded foothills of Mount Sugarloaf, which dominated the skyline.
Eleanor parked the hearse next to a small park at the end of the street commemorating victims of the Deerfield Massacre. The house she wanted was just a few down on the left. She turned off the engine and relaxed behind the wheel. She began pushing the tendrils of her thoughts throughout the neighborhood, weaving the fabric of the Machine into the area until no one would see what she was doing; no one would hear.
The boy was playing in his back yard. His father had built a sandbox for him that was huge. Right now it was filled with every truck he owned and he was busy pushing them around as he built a city of sand. Eleanor probed his mind quickly and bluntly; there was no time to be subtle. The tugging pain in her heart had begun to accelerate, and the burning feeling was spreading to her arms again.
The boy was filling a yellow Tonka dump truck with sand when he heard high-pitched singing:
"Tra la la."
He looked up and heard it again.
"Tra la la."
The boy stood and looked toward the trees. The singing was coming from there. The voice sounded like a little girl's. Leaving his trucks and sand city behind, the boy climbed out of the sandbox and started across the wide lawn to the trees.
The singing continued, fading for a second now and then as if the singer was passing in and out of earshot. As he followed the sound, the boy realized the singer was walking through the woods on the trail that ran from the small park down the street, past the row of houses, winding eventually all the way to the top of Sugarloaf. He had walked that path with his dad several times that past summer and knew it well.
He ran to the large elm tree nearest the edge of the woods and slipped around it onto the path.
"Tra la la."
The singing was coming from not too far ahead. The boy ran in the direction of the sound, moving swiftly along the path, jumping over exposed tree roots and fallen trees and branches. There was something familiar about the voice. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he knew he had heard the voice somewhere before. The fact that he couldn't remember where was driving him nuts and egged him on harder to find the source.
Several times he thought he was clos
e. The little girl's voice sounded just ahead of him over a small slope in the path or just beyond a bend of trees and overgrown bushes, but each time he pushed on, he found nothing. It was almost as if the voice was teasing him, playing with him, luring him on. It was annoying and, combined with the elusive familiarity of the voice, was fast becoming maddening.
The boy ran faster in an attempt to catch up with the singer. Though she continued to elude him, he was glad she wasn't heading for Mount Sugarloaf. His father wouldn't let him go that way on the path unless he was with him. If the singer kept on the path, the boy knew he could catch her at the park where the path came out of the woods.
It wasn't too much farther now, and the boy pushed on doggedly. Just through a ravine, up and over a leaf-covered embankment, and the path descended to the small, tree-dotted park. The singer's repetition of the same three notes was starting to annoy him, also. He wanted to catch up to her to tell her to shut up, as much as he wanted to find out who she was and why she sounded so familiar.
The boy ran down the path into the park. The grass around the stone monument to settlers who had died in an Indian uprising was carpeted with brightly colored leaves. Brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges painted the ground and danced along, pushed by small gusts of wind.
The boy ran into the middle of the park, glancing everywhere. The park appeared empty and the voice had stopped. He walked over to the stone monument and heard a shy giggle from behind a nearby tree. He turned and caught a glimpse of something red. "Who are you?" he called.
There was another giggle before a little girl stepped around the tree and smiled shyly at him. "I'm on my way to my grandmother's house," the girl said in a squeaky, Betty Boop voice.
The boy's mouth dropped open in amazement. He stared wide-eyed at the little girl wearing the red cape and hood tied up under her chin and knew why she had sounded so familiar. Last weekend his father had brought home a videotape of classic Tex Avery cartoons. One of them, called "Swingshift Cinderella," had started with Little Red Riding Hood being chased by a jazzy-looking wolf in a zoot suit and spats. Eventually, in the cartoon, the wolf dumped Red Riding Hood to chase after a blues-singing Cinderella who drove a long sports car.
The boy had loved the cartoon, laughing wildly at it and watching it over and over again. Now, Red Riding Hood stood before him. That in itself was amazing, but what was really incredible to the boy was that she appeared exactly as she had in the video-she was a cartoon! Just like the title character in his favorite movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Red Riding Hood was a walking, talking, three-dimensional, reallife cartoon.
"You want to come with me, big boy?" Red Riding Hood said in a pouty voice and with a seductive sway of her hips. "My boyfriend will be along any minute to give us a ride. Whatcha say? Wanna?" she asked coyly, winking at him.
The boy didn't know what to do or say. He was dumbfounded. He knew that what he was seeing couldn't be sohis father had told him cartoons, like Roger Rabbit, weren't real-but here was walking, talking proof.
"Whatsa matter, honey? Cat gotcha tongue?"
The boy gave her a goofy smile. Whatever was going on, he liked it. This was neat!
The sound of a car engine drawing close caught Red Riding Hood's attention. "That must be my beau, now," she said in her funny voice. A cartoon car pulled up at the curb just a few yards away and the door flew open. Out popped the Big Bad Wolf, just as the boy had remembered him from the cartoon. He was decked out in a yellow and green pin-striped zoot suit. A huge, gold watch chain hung from his vest pocket and his bushy, cartoon tail stuck out of the seat of his pants. He flashed a large, toothy smile (one of his teeth was gold and sparkled brightly in his mouth) and laughed a deep, soulful laugh.
"Hey baby! What's cookin'?" he cried in a raspy, jive voice.
Red Riding Hood blushed and giggled. "Hiya Wolfie," she squeaked. She ran across the park and threw herself into his arms. They kissed and bright red hearts flew from their meeting lips and sailed around their heads before popping like soap bubbles.
"Wolfie, this is my new friend. He's comin' to Grandma's house with us," Red explained, pointing at the boy.
"Okay, dollface. Whatever you say," the wolf replied, motioning to the boy. "Hop in, pal. There's a real gasser of a party goin' on down at Granny's pad. We'll have a blast."
The boy laughed loudly. I'm in a cartoon, he thought gleefully. He nodded his head rapidly, still too overcome to speak, and ran to the Big Bad Wolf's cartoon car. The wolf stood by it, holding open the driver's door as Red Riding Hood climbed inside. The boy followed.
Suddenly everything was different. The outside of the car was long and balloonish, the way a cartoon car should be, but the inside was like any other real car. Everything was dull and drab. He had gone from a colorful, bright world to a cold gloomy reality in a matter of seconds.
The boy looked around for her but Red Riding Hood was gone. The Big Bad Wolf was getting in and the boy turned to ask him where Red was. Like the car's interior, the wolf was no longer in cartoon form, either. The inside of the car filled with the smell of dirty, wet fur, like a dog left out in the rain. It was overpowering and gagged the boy.
A long, furry gray, real arm with a huge paw tipped with deadly looking claws grasped the steering wheel. A massive, pointy-eared head, with eyes glowing an ember red over a long snout and mouth hanging open to reveal a dangerous array of saliva-coated teeth, ducked into the car followed by a massive, fur-covered body. The wolf's eyes fixed on the boy, and his long, sharp mouth curled into a grin. He reached out a brutish, clawed paw and put it on the boy's head.
"Th-th-th-that's all f-f-folks!" he growled in an ugly imitation of Porky Pig.
The boy collapsed on the seat.
CHAPTER 30
You shall have an apple.
Jennifer walked home through the woods, searching frantically for the path that led to her grandmother's secret glen and gingerbread house. Everyday that she could, since she'd first discovered Grandma living in the woods behind her house, Jennifer had walked home from school, taking Dorsey Lane Extension to the candy house where she whiled away the hours listening to Gram tell stories that painted beautiful images in Jennifer's mind. Two days ago, that had changed. Walking home, crossing Jackie's troll bridge, the path was no longer where it should have been, and Jennifer couldn't find the gingerbread house, or her grandmother.
At first, she had rushed home to tell Jackie, against Gram's orders, all about it so that he could help her look. But just as she'd been about to tell him she'd got the overwhelming feeling that she shouldn't; that if she did, Gram might never come back. Instead, she had gone back into the woods and searched, and continued searching every day, on her way home from school every afternoon, and after supper. It was difficult to believe that her grandmother would desert her like this but the more she searched and couldn't find her, the more it seemed that way.
It had ruined Jennifer's entire week. Gram had promised to help her make a wonderful Halloween costume of Cinderella's ball gown to go trick-or-treating in, complete with glass slippers. With Halloween tomorrow, she had nothing to wear. Without Gram, Jen didn't even feel like dressing up, much less going trick-or-treating. She'd end up staying home with Jackie, who never went trick-or-treating because he was too scared of all the kids in costume.
Frustrated, Jen sat on a tree stump and tried to retrace mentally the steps she'd taken that first day she'd discovered Grandma's house. She was certain she was going in the right direction, but instead of coming out on the secret place with its glimmering candy house, she came out of the woods to find only the ugly, old Grimm house, which as far as she knew was deserted. She was going to have to face it; Grammy was gone. At the sadness of that thought, a sigh rose in her and climbed until it reached a sob. Tears weren't far behind and soon she was wallowing in self-pity.
Jackie got off the bus and ran home as fast as he could. He did that everyday, but today he did it out of excitement rather than fear. Today had been
his best day ever at school. Today he'd won the first-grade spelling bee over all the other students from all five first-grade classes at Pioneer Regional. In his backpack he had the engraved plaque he had been given for first place.
He was so excited he hadn't once thought about the fact that tomorrow was Halloween, the one holiday in the year that he didn't look forward to. He had never really liked the idea of dressing up like a monster or a ghost, which was what Jen had always wanted to be. He had liked getting candy, but when he heard his parents talking about how some people put razors and bad drugs in candy to hurt kids, Jackie had stopped liking even that part of it.
Right after school, he had raced out to the parking lot to tell Jennifer, but she had already gone, off to her stupid woods. He had been very disappointed. He was dying to tell someone and show off his trophy. He'd shown a couple of kids on the bus, but they hadn't seemed impressed. He couldn't wait to get home to show his mother. Maybe, because he'd done something really good, she'd pay some attention to him.
He flew through the front door. "Hey, I'm home," he called. After a quick glance in the living room, then the dining room, he ran down the hall to the kitchen. All the downstairs rooms were empty. He turned and ran back through the hall and up the stairs. A quick perusal of the second-floor rooms showed that he was alone in the house. Looking sadly at his plaque, Jackie sat at the top of the stairs, fighting back tears of self-pity.
He heard a noise, a loud creaking, like someone stepping on a loose floorboard. It came from his parents' room. Jackie leaned back, looking through the open doorway where he had a view of the head of his parent's bed and the closet beyond it.
Grimm Memorials Page 25