Gretel

by Christopher Coleman

  “You will stay and check on your brother as I’ve instructed! That is what you will do!” Heinrich frowned and opened his mouth as if to say more, then gingerly stepped up into his old pickup and drove off.

  As Gretel watched him drive away, the tears came again in force, though this time in silence. She watched until the truck was out of view, confirming that her father was indeed heading north to the Interways, and then walked back to the house where she sat down on the porch again and began to thumb slowly through her dead grandmother’s book.

  It was a rather ridiculous waste of time, she thought, looking through the book, since she couldn’t read a word of it. But it comforted her and made her feel more connected to her family somehow.

  According to Deda, the symbols and letters that made up the text were similar to Ancient Greek, and the book itself contained the practices and mythologies of a religion hundreds of years older than Christianity. How he knew all this without being able to read it was still a bit unclear to Gretel, and her grandfather had deflected the question during their powwow in his kitchen. Clearly he had some familiarity with the language, or perhaps her grandmother did, and had explained it to him. Either way, as Gretel now reflected, he had been holding something back.

  Gretel tried once again to decipher the sentences, recognizing that many of the letters in the book were the same as they were in English—the ‘A’s’ and ‘N’s’ and ‘T’s’ and such—but it was all gibberish, and her light-hearted stab at amateur cryptography left her brain sore.

  Still, the age of the words and the feel of the book kept her rapt, and she looked through the pages slowly, as if actually reading. The book kept her mind off her mother—and her father for that matter—and she suddenly felt very grateful that her grandfather had encouraged her to take it.

  Orphism.

  She would research the subject the next time she went to town and could stop in the library. Or maybe she would ask some of her teachers when she returned to school, though she doubted any of them would be familiar with such an exotic text.

  If she and her family had still gone to church she would have asked one of the nuns, or perhaps the preacher after Sunday service; certainly they would have some knowledge of a book older than The Bible. But the routine of church-going had come to an abrupt end several years ago, with little forewarning or explanation, and though it was something that Gretel welcomed at first, she had grown to miss church, if only for the gathering of friends.

  Gretel read for an hour or so and then closed the book and placed it on her lap. She sat meditatively for a few moments, staring out the window toward the elms in the back, before deciding she had better check on Hansel. Her father had become far too overprotective of her brother lately, Gretel thought, but today she understood.

  She took a deep breath and walked outside to the front stoop, leaving the book behind her on the chair. The air had quickly thickened with the emergence of the afternoon sun and the humidity stung her lungs instantly. Gretel looked off toward the fields and saw Hansel sitting in the dirt, playing with one of his many stick creatures that her father had made for him over the years. He was still such a young boy, she thought, and her eyes filled with tears.

  Gretel cupped her hands around her mouth and lifted her chin, and as she inhaled to call her brother in from the fields, she noticed the cloud of dust that was rising from the end of the half-mile road that led past the fields to their cottage. It seemed to appear spontaneously, as if suddenly erupting from beneath the ground like a geyser of powder. The glare of the sun reflecting off the particles made it impossible for Gretel to see the source, but as the cloak of earth dissipated she saw the unmistakable red metal explode from the dust and go speeding insanely past Hansel toward the house. It looked as if the devil were coming, Gretel thought. But she knew better.

  There was no mistaking it. It was The System.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Anika fidgeted and grimaced, then rolled to her back and screamed. Reflexively, her left eye opened and the scream devolved into heavy breathing. She stared searchingly at the beams that ran along the ceiling above her, trying desperately to get her bearings. The daylight shone in from a small lunette window over her bed and illuminated the room, but nothing was familiar.

  She touched her head where she had been struck and thought absently that it was probably a good sign of her condition that she even remembered the attack. The feel of her forehead made her dry heave. Her right eye was swollen shut and felt enormous; the entire area around it having the texture of a ripe plum, and probably looking about the same, she imagined. Anika pulled her fingers away from her head and looked at the white doughy substance that caked her fingertips. It had the consistency of batter, and she guessed it to be some type of moist medicinal powder.

  Lying on her back, Anika surveyed the room and took note of the accommodations. They were far from charming, or even sterile, but they appeared fairly adequate—the wool blanket, sheeted bed, and apparent medicine on her wound even suggesting she was being nursed. It was a pleasant thought considering the attack she had received. Perhaps whoever assaulted her had done so mistakenly and was now atoning, believing perhaps that Anika was the wild creature she herself had imagined was lurking in the dark of the forest. Or maybe Anika had been unconscious for days and had already been rescued from her assailant.

  Neither scenario seemed quite right to Anika, but whoever brought her to the comfort of the bed in which she now lay was certain to reveal himself soon. Her scream moments ago had been wild and echoing and, judging by the sounds of movement and clanging pots outside the door, there was definitely someone else in the house. And smells had begun to seep into the room, incredible smells that filled Anika’s mouth with saliva and churned her stomach.

  Despite the pain and fatigue gripping her head and muscles, she was eager to get up. Anticipating a rush of pain to her head, Anika lifted herself gently to a sitting position in the bed and pulled the wool blanket off of her lap. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much protest from her body, though her head hurt badly, both inside and on the surface. But Anika was now confident she could get to her feet.

  She swung her legs toward the floor and immediately felt the jolt of resistance on her right foot. Anika shrieked, immediately thinking someone had grabbed her from beneath the bed. But as she looked down to her feet she saw the black oval links running between the wall and the mattress before ending in a thick metal tube around her right ankle. She was chained.

  She kicked her foot once, but there was little slack in the chain, and the effort was feeble. Now in a panic, she quickly cleared the blankets entirely from her legs and grabbed at the metal around her ankle. The clasp itself was fairly loose, but the metal was thick and appeared impenetrable to Anika.

  She followed the chain from her ankle to the balled up quilt that had collected at the wall by her feet. She moved the quilt aside, looking down through the gap between the wall and the bed. There she could see a large metal plate with six thick bolts connecting the chain to the floor. She scooted down toward the foot of the bed, gripped the chain tightly with both hands and pulled up, again having no success as the length of the chain offered little leverage. The cold dark metal in her hand conjured thoughts of slavery and brutality, and only some primal sense of survival kept Anika from screaming again, though it was obviously no secret to her captor where she was being held.

  A rush of pain shot through Anika’s head, and she lay back down, supine, again feeling her wound and the mushy substance that coated it. It then occurred to her that she was indeed being nursed, but she was also a prisoner.

  Suddenly the sounds outside the door—’kitchen sounds’ is how Anika would come to know them—stopped, and Anika could hear the approaching rap of light footsteps followed by the creaking of her door as it opened slowly. The knob on the door rattled as it turned, and when the door finally opened, Anika could see the flat edge of something black and heavy—cast iron perhaps—emerge through the port
al, followed by the white deformed hands that gripped either side of the object.

  With only one good eye, Anika first marked the object as some kind of blunt weapon, different than the one that had put her in her current state, but just as medieval and menacing. Her heart began to gallop, and she instinctively got to her knees, raising her arms to shoulder height and width in defense, fingers spread, as if prepared for a Roman wrestling match. And then she began to scream.

  Anika’s one working eye stayed fixed on the shape in the doorway and, as it began to focus, she realized the object being carried was not a weapon after all, but was, in fact, a tray. With food. A large plate of food.

  It was a meal.

  With some effort, Anika forced herself to look up from the tray to the face of the person carrying it, but his head was shrouded in a dark hood that was much too large for the figure underneath. He looked like a monk, she thought, and the slow, silent movements through the room only reinforced the image. Anika could only see the tip of the nose and lips—she couldn’t identify a face—but as she studied the shape in full, there was no doubt about it: the figure in the robe was a woman.

  Anika let out a sigh, if not of relief, at least of the pressure built up in the previous few seconds over the prospect of being raped and tortured. Something bad seemed certain to be looming of course, but at least a sexual assault and murder didn’t seem to be in the cards. At least not for now. Instead, it appeared, she was about to be fed.

  “Where am I?” Anika asked as sternly as possible, “Why am I chained?” She kept her eyes riveted to the cloaked figure and watched intently as the woman walked toward the corner of the room opposite the bed and set the tray on a thin black wrought iron table.

  The woman paused for a moment at the tray, making sure everything was just so, and then stood erect, turning toward Anika and lowering her hood. “Which question would you like answered first?” she said pragmatically, without emotion.

  Anika was surprised at the normalcy of the woman’s features, expecting something closer to a stereotypical hag from the fairy tales, decrepit and grotesque, slightly green perhaps. In fact, Anika guessed the woman was maybe only twenty years older than she, though her skin appeared more weathered-looking and hardened than that. Anika supposed she would have described the woman as homely, and rather unremarkable in every way, though with a little effort she would have probably cleaned up decently. She did notice, however, her mouth seemed a bit large for her face.

  A glint of recognition flashed in Anika’s mind, but it was subtle, and Anika hadn’t the luxury to pursue it at the moment. “Why am I chained?” she answered.

  Without hesitation the woman responded, “You are chained because I don’t know you. And though, admittedly, you don’t look like much of a threat, I have been robbed by nicer-looking creatures than yourself. With no intended insult of course.”

  Anika detected an aged quality to the woman’s voice, and perhaps an accent that had diminished over time. “So you keep an anchored chain in your bedroom—just in case you meet any strangers?”

  The sarcasm wasn’t lost on the woman and she smiled, picking up the plate of food and carrying it to Anika’s bedside. “This room was at one time used as a slaughterhouse. Some of the instruments remain.”

  Anika was skeptical of this answer, but decided she would be well-advised not to challenge it; besides, the approaching plate of food quickly became the main subject of her focus. She had literally never been this hungry before, and tears filled her eyes at the prospect of eating.

  The woman set the tray down at the foot of Anika’s bed and then turned and walked toward the door as if to leave the room.

  Anika’s eyes were locked in on the three small pies that sat neatly on the tray, the smells arising from them suggesting a combination of both meat and fruit. Anika’s throat convulsed in hunger, but as the door opened, she resisted her desires for a moment and said, “Why did you hit me?”

  The woman stopped at the threshold of the door, as if surprised at Anika’s restraint, and turned back toward the bed. This time the woman did not smile, but instead looked sympathetic, caring. “We all need to eat,” she said, and then walked out.

  Anika watched her leave, and then dug her fingers into the pie closest to her, shoving irregular pieces into her mouth, barely swallowing between bites. The tastes were delicious, and though Anika realized her hunger probably clouded her judgment, she could think of nothing else she had ever eaten that tasted quite this good. Moments later, before Anika had devoured the last pie, the cloaked woman entered the room again, this time carrying a large black pot.

  “Your toilet,” she said placing it beside the bed. “Summon me when it needs emptying.” The woman turned to leave.

  “Wait.” Anika shoved the last piece of crust into her mouth. She swallowed the last morsel without chewing it, and then, “Thank you, these were delicious. You’re quite talented.” Anika was still unsure of the woman’s motives, but she figured flattery couldn’t hurt. And the pies really were amazing.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’m feeling much better. Food and rest: what better medicine is there?” Anika paused, waiting for some reciprocation to her attempt at rapport. The woman stayed silent. “Perhaps you could show me back to the road.” Anika looked down at the chain around her ankle. “Clearly I’m no threat.” She snorted a laugh at this last notion.

  “You’ll need more rest; and your wound will need another application.” The woman’s tone suggested there would be no further discussion, and she walked quickly to the door, opening it and then pausing. “And the road,” she said, “you can see it from here.”

  ***

  The next morning Anika woke to the sound of wood being chopped just outside her window. There was a deliberate, grotesque nature to the sound that she had never noticed before, no doubt now occurring to her because of her current circumstances. Her first thoughts were of her children, and then her ankle, and she immediately thrust her leg away from the wall to reveal what she already knew: the chain remained.

  The fresh smells from the kitchen continued to drift into her room, and once again her appetite was activated, the memory of last night’s pies momentarily nudging its way into her mind. But Anika had eaten heartily only hours ago, and now that her hunger—along with the other necessities of warmth and sleep—had been appeased, the idea of escape strengthened and quickly positioned itself to its proper place at the helm of Anika’s concerns. It was clear the woman intended to keep her; what her intentions were beyond that was still the question.

  Geographically, Anika was close to the Interways, that much the woman had revealed. In which direction she could find the road she didn’t know, but working on that mystery was putting the cart before the horse. As long as she remained chained to the cabin floor, she might as well have been on the moon.

  She had already assessed the thick clasp of metal that was wrapped around her leg, and it looked on its face that the only way out of it—other than cutting off her foot—was with a key. Or else an extremely hearty tool, which she doubted would be conveniently resting somewhere nearby.

  Instruments from a slaughter house.

  Anika knew her share about slaughtering animals, she had been killing chickens since she was younger than Hansel and had never seen anything like the set up in this room. And it wasn’t just because of the furniture. A slaughterhouse attached to the main living area? Who would ever design such a thing? What type of person would allow the gore and filth and violent noises that accompanied the killing of animals to be only paces from her kitchen and sleeping quarters? And there wasn’t even an entrance to the room from the outside. Why would a woman want to herd filthy pigs and goats through her home when a door built into the wall was a much easier solution? Anika told herself it was possible that the room was originally intended as a bedroom and was later converted to a slaughterhouse, but on some level that theory was even more frightening.

  Anika’s mind le
aped back to the current situation. She needed to get her bearings and plan out what to do next. Was it two days since her accident on the road? That seemed right, but she couldn’t be entirely sure. She’d taken a blow to her head—a considerable one—and it was possible she’d been unconscious for longer than a day. Either way, Anika figured the longer she stayed locked in the room, the more her chances of escape diminished. She had to figure something out soon.

  She suddenly realized her vision was improved and once again felt the area above her eye. She was astonished at how small it felt, shrunken and compressed and immediately reconsidered the length of time she had been out. She’d received her share of shiners after all—they were an accepted part of life on a farm, particularly as a child—but the injury she’d sustained in the forest was blunt trauma, a deliberate strike with a weapon. And this injury appeared to be healing in a fraction of the time of any normal black eye. She couldn’t see her eye, of course, so there was probably still some discoloration, and judging by her fingers, the white paste was apparently still being applied while she slept, but the swelling was virtually gone.

  There was no longer any question in Anika’s mind that she was being nursed back to health, so perhaps the woman’s intentions weren’t sinister, just incredibly cautious. Why else would she be healing her? Maybe she really was harmless. Mad and harmless.

  Either way, Anika thought, she was being held prisoner, and whether it was for the rest of her life or a few more hours, she had a right to know why. No more stalling or cryptic answers: the next time the woman came to her room, Anika was going to find out what was going on.

  A surge of replenishment suddenly filled Anika, and she felt the need to get on her feet. The chain on her ankle was too short for her to dismount and stand beside the open side of the bed, but she thought if she were able to push the bed away from the wall and create a small gap there, she might be able to stand on the inside.