Grimm Memorials

by R. Patrick Gates

  The smell of decomposing flesh was strong here also. Vitelli pulled out his flashlight and looked at the room. The wooden table against the back wall was covered with what looked like dried blood. A severed finger lay on the table while the bones of several more littered the floor under it. To his right was a refrigerator and a large, bulky gas stove that had a vat of some spoiled, stinking substance in it. To his left a large restaurant-type freezer stood to the ceiling against the wall. Vitelli pocketed his gun, went to it, and opened it.

  Faces stared out at him, their hair in disarray, eyes wide, but glazed, mouths stretched open bigger than mouths should be. Judy Eames's head sat on the third shelf; around her, on the other shelves, were more heads: a white-haired old man, Joe Conally, and Jerry Hall. On the lower shelves were foilwrapped packages, one of which had been torn open and not rewrapped. It contained a man's frozen penis and testicles.

  Vitelli closed the door quickly and leaned against it, fighting down the nausea that threatened to bring up dinner, lunch, and breakfast. That's it! He'd had it. There was no way he could handle this alone. He was going to have to forget the glory and call in reinforcements. And if anyone ever asked why he did, he would lie, not admitting he couldn't go on because he was scared shitless.

  Vitelli turned to leave the kitchen and heard footsteps, like someone running up stairs, somewhere in the house. He pulled his gun out again and ran back to the entrance hall. The footsteps were coming from behind the crematorium door. Vitelli crouched and brought his gun up.

  "Hold it!"

  The boy shrieked, jumping as Vitelli spoke and stepped out at them. The girl looked out of it, like she was in shock or on drugs. Vitelli recognized them as Nailer's stepchildren and lowered his gun. "Where's your father?" Vitelli asked quietly.

  The boy and girl began to cry. The boy, whining loudly, pointed back at the crematorium door.

  "Alright. Come here. I'm going to put you in the squad car and call for backup," Vitelli said quietly, holstering his gun and motioning with his hand for them to move. As they crossed the room to him, the massive, man-eating dog in the other room began barking loudly at the voices it heard. Seconds later it came charging out of the chapel, straight at the Nailer kids. Vitelli screamed for them to get out of the way and tried to get his gun out again. The kids just got clear, diving at the foot of the stairs, just as the dog leaped.

  Vitelli got his gun out just as the dog hit his arm. He was knocked backwards into the wall next to the kitchen door, the gun flying out of his hand. The snarling creature went straight for his throat, but missed, clamping on to his face instead. Vitelli screamed into the monster dog's cavernous mouth as the canine's teeth tore his cheeks from his face and gulped them down. Vitelli's teeth and gums were exposed in a hideous grimace.

  The next bite found his neck, crushing his windpipe and severing both his jugular and carotid arteries as the dog's saber teeth ripped through muscle, flesh, and tendons. Blood sprayed in all directions like water from a punctured garden hose. It began to spurt in pulses, squirting blood to the beat of his dying heart. The dog, its head and coat covered with shimmering droplets of blood, held on to Vitelli's neck, drinking the hot blood spurting into its mouth.

  Jennifer screamed when Jackie screamed, his alarm setting off the reflexive action in her. Jackie grabbed her arm, backing up the stairs in terror. It was Jackie who, as the dog released the policeman and began lapping up the flood from his neck that had slowed to a weak, bubbling flow, heard the footsteps coming up the crematorium stairs.

  "The witch!" He gasped, his voice squeaky with fear. The dog, settling down to an earnest lapping of the still-twitching policeman, who lay on top of his gun, was between them and the front door, and the door to the kitchen was much too close to the horrible animal for Jackie to even consider trying for it. Since he'd only been in the entrance hall and crematorium, he didn't know what was through that door, it could be a dead end. Realizing there was no other route of escape, Jackie grabbed Jen's hand and began pulling her up the stairs to the second floor.

  CHAPTER 41

  Here we go round the mulberry bush ...

  Eleanor opened her right eye. The left one wouldn't respond. It felt as big as a grapefruit and throbbed intolerably. The throbbing pain went straight down the left side of her face. It lodged in her cheekbone and crushed her jaw. The pain picked up again in her arm, rendering it useless. She could feel broken bones rubbing and wanted to faint with the pain every time her arm was moved or even touched. She couldn't feel her left hand.

  Eleanor looked at the floor for several moments, then at the base of the cage, trying to comprehend where she was. The return of the sharp, burning pain in her chest, cutting through all the other pains her injuries had brought reminded her. She was in the crematorium. Whom with? My little kittens. But one of the kittens had claws.

  Grunting, and cradling her broken arm as best she could, Eleanor rolled to her right side before she had to stop for a breather to let the pain subside. She wondered how much time she had left and looked at Edmund's pocket watch, requiring a painful lift and twist of her head to see it where she'd hung it from its chain on the side of the podium. The watch face was smeared with blood-she realized she must have rubbed against it-but she could see enough to guess. She had less than an hour left until midnight. So little time to perform the last two sacrifices of the fifth ritual and complete the sixth. So little time to live.

  She took a deep breath and struggled to her knees. The pain expanded but she fought it, going beyond the limits of normal endurance. She had to. She'd come too far to lose it all now to mere pain. As she grabbed the cage's iron door jamb with her right arm and pulled herself to her feet, she had to concede that what was rioting through her body was no mere pain. This was pain that went beyond the River Pain. This pain rivalled the universe itself. This was pain that deserved respect.

  She reached her feet, and leaned against the cage, her breath rattling in and out of her. Her left arm hung limply at her side, jangling with intense pain at having been moved when she stood. The pain brought on gray waves of unconsciousness like a storm rolling in off the sea, but she fought them off.

  As the waves receded, she became aware of voices. She heard them with her ears, and faintly, like an echo in her head, with the Machine. She closed her eyes and listened. It was the brother and sister (Wait till I get my hands on him!) and another person ... a policeman! At that moment she heard Mephisto bark and charge out of the chapel.

  Pushing herself away from the cage, Eleanor staggered across the room to the door. Pain bombarded her with every step, but she went on. Each step up the crematorium stairs was a world of pain, but she made it to the top. She pushed open the door.

  Mephisto glanced up menacingly from his meal until he saw who it was. He wagged his tail and went back to lapping the blood from the dead policeman's ripped face and neck.

  "Good boy," Eleanor wheezed with pain. She stood in the doorway at the top of the stairs, holding onto the doorknob with her right hand so that she didn't go plummeting down the stairs. Where were her little ones? She cast about for them with the Machine. It was as weak as she. It took her several long, painful minutes to find them, upstairs somewhere; she had trouble pinpointing exactly where.

  She stepped away from the crematorium door and the room began to spin. She fell back against the wall, twisting her body, so as not to hit her tortured left arm. It screamed with pain at the motion anyway. She leaned against the couch for support while the pain had its way with her, then summoned every feeble ounce of strength she had left. She staggered away from the couch, crossing the entrance hall to the stairs in a sideways roll of limping steps and grabbed hold of the newel post like a drowning victim reaching for a hand. At the bottom of the stairs, she slid to her knees, and leaned forward, resting her head on the fourth step.

  It was no use; at the moment, she could go no further. She closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply, trying to blot out the pain, and revive
the Machine. Her body couldn't go after them just yet, but the Machine could.

  "Maybe Grammy's in the backyard," Jennifer said softly, her voice shocked and distant. "Can we go see?" she whispered to Jackie.

  "Shh!" he shot back, harshly. They were creeping along the left hallway from the second-floor landing, which was still visible behind them. Though he had not heard the footsteps coming up the crematorium stairs following them yet, Jackie was more scared than before. He could feel something, something in the air; a feeling that the air was expanding, growing, becoming alive. He began to feel like the very air itself could eat him just like the witch! Suddenly Jackie could feel her all around him as if her obscene arms were wrapping him in their deadly embrace once again.

  The darkness ahead of them didn't seem empty anymore.

  Jackie hesitated. He looked at his sister, then into the darkness ahead. A pair of eyes flickered in the shadows for a moment. He began to back up, pulling Jennifer along with him. The eyes reappeared again for a second, moving toward them. Jackie began to backpedal faster. Jennifer stumbled along at his side.

  The eyes came out of the darkness and a face was revealed. Jackie smiled with happy relief at first, until the head came fully into view. It was shaved. The top of it was slightly askew, not aligned with the rest of the face. Dried blood crusted along a line at the top of the forehead.

  It was Margaret.

  Jackie gulped. The air became thick and heavy and hard to move through. Margaret kept coming. The more he saw of her, the more he wanted to run. Her face was bloated and streaked with vertical lines of blood running down it from the horizontal cut across her forehead. Her eyes were vacant, dead. A line of dried blood ran from both nostrils and from the corner of her mouth down to her neck; that was where her blue-tinted skin ended.

  The rest of her body was like one of those Human Body glass models that Jackie had seen once and hated immediately. Her insides were exposed and rotting. The skin and most of the meat had been flayed from her body, exposing bone and shreds of muscle that were putrefying and rotting away. There were gaping cavities in her chest and stomach and Jackie realized that, like the Tin Man, she didn't have a heart.

  Jackie backed himself and Jennifer all the way to the landing. Margaret walked out of the darkness on her raw legs and decomposing body. She smiled at him and spoke to Jennifer.

  "Hi Jen," she said sweetly in a voice that Jackie immediately recognized as the witch's.

  "Run Jen!" Jackie yelled, making a dash for the other hallway and pulling Jennifer with him.

  "Grammy!" Jennifer cried. She pulled her hand free from Jackie's. "It's only Grammy, Jackie," she said to him and went back.

  Jackie watched in horror as his sister wrapped her arms around dead Margaret's stinking remains and kissed her on the cheek, knocking the lid of her head off. It bounced on the floor and rolled around and around like a dropped quarter before spinning to a halt.

  The witch is playing games with us. The thought was a crystal-clear revelation for Jackie, like a flashbulb going off in a dark room, freezing everything perfectly in the light for a second. He'd just been wondering what had happened to Margaret and whether or not the witch still held her captive. The witch had heard his thoughts and was able to make him see her, forcing him to retreat back to the stairs where she was probably lying in wait to grab them. She had made Jennifer see Grammy, and now it looked like his sister was back under the witch's spell.

  "It's not Grammy," Jackie yelled at Jennifer, trying to jar her out of her trance. "It's the witch! Don't look at her," he urged, but it was no use. Jen was lost to him. A creaking sound behind him made him turn. He was near the top of the stairs. The witch was crawling up toward him, clutching the banister with her right hand and taking each step on her knees.

  Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the witch sang off key in his head.

  Jackie shrieked, stepping away from the stairs. Margaret's skinned and rotting hand clutched at his shoulder. He turned, saw Margaret's bloated, overripe face, and shrieked again. He pulled away from her, shaking his shoulder free of her clutches and ran headlong down the other hallway.

  "Jackie, come back!" Jennifer cried after him.

  Halfway down the hall, Jackie saw a door and ran to it. He pushed it open and ducked inside. He stood against the door, catching his breath and wondering what he was going to do now. In the dim moonlight shining through the win dow, he could see an old, dust-caked, four-poster bed in the corner and a large dresser against the near wall.

  Jackie ran to the window and yanked it open. The swollen wood screamed as frame and sash rubbed hard against each other. Jackie stuck his head out, the night air was cold, but felt good after the heat and stench of the crematorium. The window was about thirty feet off the ground over the side of the house where the family Saab and the witch's hearse were parked. It was definitely too far to jump, but running down the side of the house, right next to the window was a drainpipe that Jackie thought he could climb down. He didn't want to, but knew he had no choice.

  He put his knee on the sill and leaned out to grab the drainpipe when he heard a whispery, scuttling sound above him. He craned his head up for a look and gasped. Scrabbling down the side of the house above him was a black spider the size of a horse. Its onyx eyes gleamed in the moonlight and fixed on Jackie's head. Its foot-long mandibles dripped with poisonous drool as they opened and the witch's voice came out, croaking, "Itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout"

  Jackie pulled his head quickly in and slammed the screaming window shut. A small black spider skittered across the glass, leaving a trail of silk. "The witch again," Jackie whispered. Outside the door, he heard footsteps approaching down the hall.

  Jackie looked about frantically for a weapon. The only thing handy was a small, glass perfume bottle on the dresser next to him. He grabbed it and made ready to whip it at whatever came through the door.

  The knob turned slowly.

  Jackie gritted his teeth.

  The lock hammer clicked and the door opened a crack.

  Jackie's bowels clenched so tight in fear they hurt.

  The door started to open.

  Jackie raised the bottle.

  A stream of warm air blew in from the door.

  Goosebumps blossomed on his arm.

  The door opened. The light came on. The witch, dried blood caking her body, streaking her legs, the left side of her face swollen and bruised purple, stepped into the room. Arms reaching, clawing hands clutching, she rushed toward Jackie.

  He threw the bottle with all his might. It struck the witch in the forehead, and passed right through it as her head, then the rest of her body, became transparent and disappeared.

  The room was empty as before. The door was closed. The light was off. Jackie still held the perfume bottle in his hand. The witch was gone, but there were again footsteps in the hall.

  In an exact replay, the footsteps stopped outside; the door opened; the light came on; the witch charged in; he threw the bottle; the witch disappeared.

  The room was dark and quiet again. The bottle was back in his hand.

  And there were footsteps in the hall.

  They stopped.

  The knob turned.

  Door opened.

  Lights came on.

  Witch charged in.

  Throw the bottle.

  Witch disappeared.

  Footsteps in the hall.

  The scene played over and over. The gruesome, murderbent witch charging in; the gruesome murder-bent witch disappearing. Each time, Jackie thought he was going to crap his pants. Each time, after he threw the bottle, his arms flailed, fighting off empty air.

  Jackie was helpless. He was like a kid on LSD captivated by a strobe light. The repeating scene held him enthralled in abject terror because he knew that one of these times the witch would be real and there would be no escape.

  The scene began to play faster, like a film run on fast forward. Jac
kie began to cry and the tears helped break the hypnotic effect of the scene. He stopped throwing the bottle and dropped it. He turned to the window, but the small spider weaving its silk web across the glass dissuaded him from trying it again. It didn't matter if he knew it wasn't real, he hated spiders and couldn't face that big one again, real or not. Any second now, he knew the witch coming through the door would be the real one. He had to do something. The panic of terror spurred him to courage. He let out a yell and charged the witch as she came through the door again.

  She looked surprised, then disappeared.

  Jackie dashed into the hall and looked back toward the landing. The witch was on the top step. Jennifer was reaching down, helping the witch to her feet. "Jen! No!" Jackie cried with renewed tears.

  Jennifer didn't turn to look at him, but concentrated solely on helping the witch. When she was on her feet, hanging on to the newel post as if she'd fall over without it, the witch whispered in Jennifer's ear. She nodded and turned, walking toward Jackie.

  "Come with me and Grammy, Jackie. She's come to take us away with her," Jennifer coaxed.

  "She's not Grammy!" Jackie screamed at her.

  "Yes she is," Jen replied calmly with that maddening, vacant smile plastered to her lips.

  "That's not Grammy," Jackie sobbed, backing away from Jennifer. "That's a witch!" he shouted.

  "You and your imagination," Jennifer clucked. "Don't be silly. How many times do I have to tell you: There are no such things as witches," she lectured. "Now stop being such a big baby and come with us "" She reached out her hands to him.

  "Stay away from me, Jen," Jackie said pleadingly, backing up some more. Behind his sister, the witch stood hunched over, wheezing in pain, her left eye swollen closed but her right one watching every move they made.

  "I just want you to come with me and Gram and be happy."

  "No!" Jackie choked out. He turned and ran away from his sister, down the hall and around the corner into darkness.

  Eleanor was on the verge of collapse, but the Machine was humming strong. For the first time in days, she was certain that if she did lose consciousness, the Machine would roll on, keeping things under control. It was ironic that here she was, weak to the point of collapse, in the worst physical shape she'd ever been in, on death's doorstep, and the Machine was running like old times. It was as if the immense pain within her had helped her become detached from her physical body and more completely immersed in the Machine than she had ever been before. At times she felt as if the Machine was feeding on her life's energy itself.