Grimm Memorials

by R. Patrick Gates

  The Machine was strong again. Growing stronger every moment.

  Eleanor knew that the only thing that could stop the Machine now would be her death, which would be inevitable if she couldn't get that damned boy back.

  As Jennifer returned to her at the top of the stairs, Eleanor let go of the newel post and grabbed Jennifer's shoulder with her good hand. Using her as support, Eleanor turned and looked back down the stairs. She pursed her lips and let out a low whistle. Below, Mephisto stopped dragging the policeman's body into the chapel and responded to his master's call. He padded quickly up the stairs, head raised inquisitively, waiting for instructions.

  CHAPTER 42

  Alabone, crack a bone ...

  Jackie felt his way along the wall through the darkness. There was a window at the end of the hall, but since it was on the side of the house away from the moon, it glowed only dimly, revealing its own outline and little else. Jackie glanced back every few seconds to be sure neither Jen nor the witch were creeping up on him. He knew the witch would be after him soon, and he didn't know what to do. He was totally alone, and more scared than a six-year-old should ever have to be.

  The witch had Jen in her spell again. His mother lay down in the crematorium, waiting for whatever horrible thing it was that the witch was going to do to her. He thought of his stepfather Steve, and his short-lived friend Mark, and tears flooded his eyes. Not for the first time nor the last, he wished this was all a nightmare that he could wake up from.

  A giggle slipped from the darkness ahead. Jackie froze against the wall. He stood there, listening, and straining his eyes into the darkness. Gradually, he became aware of a dim glow from a door ahead and to the left. It was partially open. Another giggle came from beyond the door. It sounded like a child's voice.

  Maybe it's another kid the witch kidnapped, Jackie thought hopefully. He crossed the hallway quickly and quietly. He leaned in and peered around the door, but couldn't see much. A dark, cane-bottomed wood chair sat in the corner and a writing desk was just inside the door, against the wall. The light flickered, as if from a candle, and cast shadows on the furniture and walls.

  Jackie looked at the two pieces of furniture and realized there was something strange about them. They were not regular size. They looked like children's furniture, similar to a desk and chair he had owned when they lived in the North End. Jackie pushed the door open slowly. He hoped it wouldn't creak and miraculously it didn't. The door silently swung wide.

  The room was filled with small furniture: a table, a leatherupholstered captain's chair, a small bed. Sitting on the bed was a young, dark-haired woman of exceptional beauty, with skin so pale it was luminous. Snow White! Jackie thought immediately. He heard the giggling again, but it wasn't Snow White giggling.

  Jackie looked beyond the bed to the dark shadows of the far corner. There stood the seven dwarfs, all bunched up close together. This can't be real, Jackie thought. It's got to be ... the witch. As Jackie stared at them,' he realized these were no Disney dwarfs-no Grumpy, Sneezy, or Dopey. These dwarfs were for real: mutant miniature old men with long beards and tough wrinkled skin.

  The one in the front, a muscular, thick-necked, ugly thing, giggled. The sound was no longer childlike. His laughter was bad, what Jackie's mother would call a dirty laugh. The sound bit into Jackie, making him shiver and snapping him back to his senses. It was then that he noticed that the thicknecked dwarf, and all the others, were naked.

  The ugly one in front was fondling his private parts as he stared lecherously at Snow White. Jackie looked at her on the bed and winced. She was pulling her blouse open, re vealing firm white breasts topped with cherry red nipples. Jackie looked at her face, noticing something he hadn't before. Her face was lewdly made up with too much mascara. There were bright red rouge spots on her cheeks and thick red lipstick on her mouth. She looked at Jackie and winked. She opened her mouth and ran her tongue slowly over her lipstick-stained teeth.

  "Come on in, Jackie," Snow White said in a lusty voice. She beckoned to him with a crooked finger.

  Jackie felt a powerful urge to obey her command. His legs actually began to move forward, propelling him into the room before he realized it and pulled back. Snow White laughed obscenely when he backed away.

  From the other side of the room, the lead dwarf grunted and charged the bed. The rest followed him. They converged on Snow White, pushing her back onto the bed swarming over her with probing hands, tongues, and privates. One of the dwarfs shoved his fat head between Snow White's legs and she let out a loud moan. Two others squeezed her breasts with their tiny hands while the leader sat on her head, straddling her face with his stubby, muscle-bound legs and pumped his long, dirty-looking thing into her mouth.

  Jackie fled the room and the horrid sight. The sound of Snow White's ecstatic moaning and the evil grunting of the dwarfs chased him down the dark corridor. As he turned a corner a huge shadowy form rose before him. Red eyes gleamed malevolently out of the darkness at him.

  "You're going the wrong way, sonny." The voice came at him thick and mean and familiar. It was a woman's voice, but it wasn't the witch's voice. He had heard it before.

  "And, you forgot to pay the troll!" the horrid voice snarled.

  The huge head loomed over him and he could see the wide, bulging brow over the cruel eyes and flat nose. The troll's mouth opened, emitting a smell like moldy fish, and revealed upper and lower rows of jagged, sharp teeth.

  The troll! She's come back for me. Jackie thought in a panic. He tried to control himself. "It's not real," he whispered, his lips barely moving. "It's the witch."

  The troll laughed and the stench of her breath grew stronger.

  "You're not real," Jackie spoke up with uneasy courage.

  "Wanna bet?" the troll hissed at him and came closer.

  It's not real. It's not real. It's not real, Jackie repeated over and over again in his mind. The troll was coming closer. Jackie backed away. This is just Anna Lucy Nation. It's just the witch. She is making me see things like I did back in the room. He had charged through her image then; he could do it now. If he could only muster the courage.

  The troll grinned at him and a long gluey string of drool ran from the corner of its mouth and hung slowly to the floor. Its body came into the shadowy light of a curtained window Jackie had just passed, and he saw its dead-looking skin and its flabby, thorny breasts.

  Jackie tried to overcome the mind-numbing terror of the beast in front of him. He thought, not unusually, of Steve, the only father-figure and model of courage Jackie had ever really known, since his real father had died when he was three. He thought of something Steve had said to him the first day they moved into the new house when Jackie had been so scared of the big trees and the forest.

  People are afraid only when they don't understand something, Steve had told him. If you know what something is, then you don't have to be afraid of it anymore. Fear is ignorance! Knowledge is strength. Jackie hadn't been sure at the time exactly what Steve meant, but now the words filled Jackie with a sense of courage.

  I don't have to be afraid of this troll, he told himself, because I know it's really just the witch making me see something that isn't really there.

  The troll stepped closer. Its long black tongue slithered out of its mouth, licking its thick, chapped lips with a sandpaper sound. Its dead breath was overpowering but he held his ground, legs trembling, but holding. He could smell its body now, too; a rancid bad cheese smell. The troll reached out its arms for him.

  Jackie counted to three, took a deep breath and ran straight at the troll.

  Her mouth opened wide, and she roared with a sound a lion would make if it could laugh. Her claw-fingered hands swept out of the darkness, closing in on him. He felt her hand, all leathery and sharp, fall on the back of his neck squeezing it tightly. Her ravenous mouth lunged for him, her foul breath panting in his face. The teeth were closing, he would be ripped to-

  The troll was gone.

  J
ackie stumbled forward in the darkness. His heart beat so hard in his chest, he had to stop and drop to his knees for several deep breaths. He began to tremble in small, quick tremors in different parts of his body. First his head shook. Then his legs. The right side of his face. He giggled hysterically at the sensation. The tremors and giggles grew until his teeth were chattering and his giggling sounded like weeping.

  He had run the gamut from terror to hope and back again and again. It left him feeling like he'd been kicked in the stomach several times. He crouched on the floor holding his belly, giggling and trembling, feeling like he was going to puke his guts out, but he didn't care.

  He had hope again! He knew he could beat the witch's power over him because he knew what it was. Just plain old Anna Lucy Nation, the lady who wasn't there. Knowledge is strength.

  The sound of a clock ticking in the darkness brought Jackie out of his bout of hysteria. Jackie peered into the darkness in both directions and could see nothing in the dim light but the corner he'd just come around. The clock ticked louder and faster. Another sound became apparent. It was a snuffling, panting sound.

  Whatever it is, Jackie thought, steeling himself, it isn't real. It's just the witch.

  Just as the huge thing came around the corner, Jackie realized it was not Anna Lucy Nation again.

  This was for real.

  Very real.

  The dog turned the corner and Jackie understood what the ticking-clicking noise was. He started running. He could hear the dog picking up speed behind him. Jackie ran to a door on his right. He clutched at the knob but his suddenly sweaty hands slipped off. He could hear the dog's growling now, and the loud, getting louder, thup, thup thup of its paws, which he had mistaken for a clock, on the floor.

  Jackie grabbed the knob again and turned it-the wrong way.

  The dog's breath was coming fast and furious. Its deep growl rose to a frenzied pitch.

  Jackie turned the knob the other way and pushed. The door opened a fraction of an inch and stopped with the loud squeak of a rusty hinge sticking.

  He looked fearfully over his shoulder. The dog was loping out of the darkness, running low on its long legs, its bloody mouth open, its tongue dangling pink and wet to one side, its teeth baring to reveal gleaming white fangs ready to rip his throat out the way it had done to the policeman who'd come to save them.

  Jackie threw himself against the door. It shrieked in protest but skittered open, tumbling Jackie inside. He landed on his right hip, just inside the door, and tried to kick it closed behind him as he fell.

  The dog stuck its head in and nearly got his foot before Jackie kicked it in the head. He slid to his back and kicked furiously with both feet on the door. It slammed on the dog's intruding snout. It yelped in pain and withdrew. Jackie kicked the door again with both feet and it closed.

  Jackie jumped to his feet and stood against the door, his ear to the wood listening, but could hear nothing. Suddenly his head bounced off the door as the entire thing shook in its hinges. There was a pause and the door shuddered again. Jackie could hear the scrape of the dog's claws on the wood each time it jumped against the door. The way the door was shaking, Jackie didn't think it would stay up too long.

  He put his back to the door and surveyed the room he was in. The dog hit the door again, jarring Jackie's vision for a moment, then he saw that the room was a small one. There was a Singer sewing machine opposite the door with a low table next to it. Against the walls were naked dress dummies. To his right was a door, and another was near the far left corner.

  Just before the dog struck the door again, Jackie ran to the far door and opened it. It was a closet.

  The door behind him let out a resounding crack. Jackie ran to the other door and pulled it open. It was a large room. Jackie ran in, slamming the door behind him. The room was lit by several heavy-shaded floor lamps against the walls. The windows were tall and heavily draped, the walls covered with bookshelves stacked to the ceiling like in the school library. In the middle of the room was a wide, wooden desk with a high-backed leather chair at it. Against the back wall was a great flagstone fireplace. A braided rug was on the floor in front of it, as were several leather armchairs and a small sofa.

  Jackie ran to the windows, but they were too dirty for him to see anything through them. He tried to open one, but it was too large and he could not budge it. He knew he had to get down to the first floor anyhow if he was ever going to get out.

  He ran to the desk with another idea, but there was no telephone. He frantically searched the entire room but could see no phone anywhere. He went through the drawers looking for anything to help and found a long, thin, silver letter opener done to look like a sword. Jackie pulled it out and clutched it in his hand.

  The sound of voices approaching drove Jackie to dive under the desk where he crouched, looking under the bottom edge. A door opened and several people came into the room; three ladies and two men and they were all wearing strange clothes. Though Jackie could only see them from the shins down he could see that the women were wearing shimmering, ballooning gowns of silk that reached all the way to the floor. The men were wearing tights and leather shoes, the toes of which were pointed and curled up.

  "The foot that fits this glass slipper shall be the foot of the next Queen, for the Prince will wed her on the morrow," a very English accented man's voice proclaimed.

  "It will fit my foot!" a high-pitched squeaky voice answered. The women sat on the sofa by the fireplace and the two men knelt in front of them. One of the women offered her foot, but when the man tried it on it was too big.

  "Just a moment," an older woman's voice said. Two of the women got off the couch and came near the desk, their feet just inches from his face. The older woman whispered to the other: "Cut your toe off; when you are Queen you will have no need to walk."

  Jackie shoved his hand in his mouth, biting down on his thumb as a hand with a knife came into view and began slashing and sawing at the big toe of one of the feet. The sound of the knife grinding through bone set Jackie to shivering. The toe came free of the foot and blood spurted right in Jackie's face.

  He let out a yell and backed out from under the desk. The room was empty. He touched his face and found it dry. It was the witch again. He'd been thinking that the fireplace in the room looked like the one he'd seen on TV on "Fairy Tale Theater" when they showed "Cinderella"

  He stood and a scrabbling sound caught his attention. It sounded like tiny pebbles and grains of sand falling on a hard surface. He looked around, unable to pinpoint its location until he saw a puff of soot mushroom out of the fireplace. A rock fell from the chimney and bounced into the room. There was a loud scraping sound and a grunt just before a short, fat man with a white beard and a red suit dropped out and waddled into the room with a sack over his shoulder.

  Santa Claus had seen better days. His suit and hat were moth-eaten, his boots ripped and muddy. His eyes were bloodshot and rheumy; his beard, stringy and greasy. He had a large canker sore on one lip and was missing his front teeth.

  Suddenly Jackie recognized who Santa really was: the person he'd always associated with Santa Claus.

  When he was three, a few Christmases ago, his mother had taken him to see Santa Claus at Faneuil Hall. On the way, he had seen a street person in a red bathrobe and ski hat dragging a large pillowcase filled with his belongings. Jackie had thought that the vagrant was Santa and had been afraid of him. Santa looked so mean and dirty and scary that Jackie had started to cry. He'd also had nightmares after that, of the scary Santa climbing down his chimney to carry him away in his sack. Ever since then, Jackie had never completely enjoyed Christmas because he always thought of that incident sooner or later.

  "Ho, ho, ho," Santa coughed more than laughed. He plopped his bag down on one of the armchairs and winked at Jackie. "Have you been a good boy?"

  Jackie didn't answer.

  "I know who's been naughty or nice," Santa crowed in a cracked voice. He opened his sack and
looked in it. "Let's see what we've got for you"

  Jackie found himself taking a step forward in anticipation without thinking.

  Santa rummaged around a bit and finally seemed to have found what he was looking for. He pulled it out.

  Jackie screamed. In Santa's hand was a freshly severed human head, the head was Jackie's. He looked at himself decapitated, the blood still dripping from the torn flesh of his neck like gutter overflow, and felt his stomach plummet. Waves of hot and cold sweat rolled over him and he felt dizzy. The room began to spin as he backed away in search of escape.

  "Merry Christmas!" Santa said, smiling. Jackie could smell his alcohol breath and B.O. all the way across the room. It increased his nausea dramatically.

  The eyes of Jackie's decapitated twin opened and stared balefully at him. Jackie let out a shriek that the bloody head echoed and ran to the door at the other side of the room.

  "Here. Catch," Santa called after him, swinging the head by the hair and tossing it to him as he pulled open the door and slipped out into the corridor again. He heard the head thump against the other side of the door and roll away on the floor. His stomach rolled with it.

  Gritting his teeth, he realized he was back in the hallway. He tensed, looking left and right for any sign of the dog. There was none. Keeping his back to the wall and clutching the letter opener firmly in his grasp in front of him, Jackie slid along the wall to the right. A few feet on, he stopped. He thought he had heard something. He peered into the darkness behind and in front of him, but could see nothing. He listened a moment longer, then went on.