Gretel

by Christopher Coleman

  “It doesn’t matter,” the old woman said, “I’m sure it’s been long enough. Far too long in fact. Certainly you know your body will do me little good at this point. And besides, I’ve found it. I’ve found the treasure. The Prize of Prizes if you will. And I’ll never let it slip away.”

  Had it been only a few days earlier, the old woman would have been killed by the stone in Heinrich Morgan’s hand. It would have landed solidly on the back of her skull and sent shards of bone into her brain. At the very least she would have been rendered unconscious, with no chance of a second clemency, as there certainly would have been additional blows that followed.

  But her senses were heightened now, and she could “see” the rock at its apex just before beginning its descent. Like a dervish, the old woman took a step to the side and then back, and then spun three hundred and sixty degrees, easily avoiding her assailant while assuming the position of strength. She was now behind Heinrich Morgan, restraining his arms to his sides, her breasts flat against his back and her mouth just inches from the man’s neck.

  The woman knew instantly after arriving that it would end this way for the Morgan father. He’d been part of Marcel’s plan after all, a fact she’d uncovered so easily with just a taste of the broth; but as a result of his ongoing poisoning—no doubt being administered by the Orphist woman—he had temporarily forgotten his commitment.

  And so it had been a dangerous play for her to strengthen him, allowing him that tiny, delicate taste; the woman knew it the moment she’d touched it to his lips. But it was only done as a temporary measure, an aid to learn what she could from the feeble man. Certainly he’d have some clue as to his wife and daughter’s whereabouts. Besides, whatever strength he regained was meaningless; the amount of brew was trivial and the effects wouldn’t last the day. It was nothing at all compared to what she’d lapped up. And, of course, Mr. Morgan wasn’t a blood relative of his wife. That was the main difference.

  The old woman turned her right hand so that her palm faced outward, away from her body, and then she plunged her nails into the side of Heinrich Morgan’s neck, letting them glide naturally through the flesh. She flushed in excitement again at her newfound strength, admiring the ease at which her fingers penetrated the skin and muscle. She let her hand rest for a beat, relishing the sounds of asphyxiation and screams (“NO!” from Odalinde), before flinging her hand violently forward and tearing out the man’s throat. With her other hand, the old woman held up the corpse of Gretel’s father for a few seconds, showing off her strength to her next opponent, and then tossed the body to the dirt. “Are you ready to die?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “How are they, Papa? Do you even know how your grandchildren have been doing?”

  “They’re fine, Anika, but it’s best we not speak about them now. It will only upset you further. Please.” Marcel nodded with a smile and waved a hand toward himself, beckoning his daughter to come and sit.

  Anika kept her distance, remaining instead at the back door of the warehouse. Ready. For what, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps when the officer returned—if he returned through the same door from which he left—she could make a run for it. Or maybe ambush him. He and that horrible witch. It was no plan at all really, a wild grasp at survival, but whatever happened, she wasn’t going to surrender again. And she was done obeying her father.

  “And how do you know they’re fine?” she asked. “Have you seen them? Or spoken with them?”

  “Oliver…” he paused, “Officer Stenson, the man who found you, he has seen them. He tells me they are well.”

  Anika bit her upper lip to restrain a scream. The thought of that hideous officer looking at or being anywhere near her children sickened her.

  “In fact, if I’m not mistaken, he spoke with Heinrich just a week or so ago. Everything with your children is fine.”

  “Spoke with Heinrich? Why?”

  Marcel peered at his daughter across the room, squinting her into focus, pausing long enough to give her time to come to the answer to her question.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry, Anika.”

  “No!” Anika screamed. “No!” And with that final scream, a foreign rage erupted in Anika, a rage she hadn’t felt even at the moment she’d crushed the skull of the hag. In one fluid motion, Anika gripped the mug of water tightly by the handle, spilling its contents to the warehouse floor, and then, torquing her body violently for leverage, smashed the bottom of the cup against the door’s mirror.

  At first the sound was electrical in nature, sharp and piercing, and then it turned heavy and liberating as the shards of silver glass rained to the floor. Instinctively, Anika shielded her eyes from the exploding shrapnel, and then, realizing there was nothing else to do now but keep going, she floated her arm slowly through the new opening in search of the knob on the opposite side. The cup had left a sizable hole where the mirror had been, but jagged shards from every direction of the perimeter still threatened. She would obviously have to hurry, but she needed to avoid shredding her arm if it could be helped.

  As she groped for the doorknob, Anika could also see through the opening to a small room which contained an exit door leading to the outside, the unmistakable neon beacon shining red on the wall above.

  Her hand found the opposing doorknob and then felt its cruel resistance as she twisted it. That should come as no surprise, she thought, the door is locked. She continued her blind search, fine-tuning it, using now the tips of her fingers to locate the locking mechanism. Within seconds, she’d found the dial and unlocked the door, and then pulled her arm back through the opening. She was free.

  Having not wasted any precious time worrying about what her father was doing during her escape, Anika turned back now to gauge him. Perhaps he was letting her leave.

  As she considered this possibility, she felt the palms of her father’s hands plunge into the middle of her chest, knocking the air from her lungs, the sound like a baseball bat on an old pillow. Her body spun slightly to the right before crashing against the cold metal scaffold behind her. The metal shelving held her upright for a moment, and then she slumped to the floor, dropping slowly before coming to rest on one knee. With her head bowed in a look of prayer, Anika blinked several times at the floor, reflexively taking inventory of her condition. She wasn’t seriously hurt. Luckily, her right arm (which would have a nasty bruise later but wasn’t broken) had taken most of the impact; had her spine taken the brunt, she thought, she may have been finished. Just survive, she thought. Just keep surviving.

  “I can’t risk you anymore, Anika,” her father spoke, this time making no pretensions at niceness. “When they arrive, she’ll have to use you as you are.”

  Anika turned her eyes to her father, glaring. Any trace of love or sorrow for him was gone. There was only hatred, a searing contempt for the man who’d raised her.

  And as this transmutation took place—from sympathy to loathing—everything in front of Anika crystallized. The shard of mirror. The side of her father’s neck. The resolve. She’d felt this before, at the witch’s cabin: a focused rage—a rage unlike the wild fury she’d released on the mirror minutes before.

  ***

  Anika had known every move before it happened. It almost wasn’t fair, she thought. And as she was walking through the door, pebbles of glass crunching beneath her shoes, she fixed back on the body lying frozen on the floor. As she stared at the corpse, the shard of mirror that protruded neatly from her father’s neck, just below his right ear, caught the light and seemed to wink at Anika. Anika winked back and walked out.

  ***

  Gretel hauled the canoe toward her, backpedaling up the bank, making certain to keep the boat from drifting, and then raced behind Petr and Hansel through the orchard to the Klahr’s house. Every gram of her body wanted to go back and fight, to help save Odalinde and her father—but she couldn’t risk Hansel and Petr following her. And she wanted to see her mother again.

  �
�What is it, Petr? Gretel?” Mrs. Klahr was on the porch, welcoming the children as she untied her apron at the back and then crumpled it into a ball. It was Amanda Klahr’s version of preparing to fight, Gretel thought absently.

  Gretel spoke rapidly, breathing heavily and stuttering. “Mrs. Klahr, it’s my father, and…and Odalinde…and my mother…and a woman…she’s a monster…or…”

  “Gretel, slow down.” Mrs. Klahr twisted back toward the house. “Georg!” she called. “Come out here, George! It’s the children!” She turned back to the kids, this time addressing Petr. “Petr, what’s going on?” Mrs. Klahr’s tone sounded almost amused as if suspecting a prank.

  “It’s true, Mrs. Klahr. There’s a woman…she…I think my father…” Petr stumbled, not sure how to relay anything that could make sense in only one or two sentences.

  “Okay, settle down Petr. My goodness!” Mr. Klahr had arrived on the porch next to his wife. “George,” she said to him, “scamper over to the Morgan house and see what all’s happening there. These children are quite hysterical.”

  “No! Mr. Klahr, no!” Gretel’s face twisted in terror. “Don’t go over there! She’s dangerous!”

  “But Gretel,” Hansel cried, “someone needs to help them!”

  Hansel was right, of course: it was likely her father and Odalinde needed help (the woman had flown!). But the thought of losing Mr. Klahr was too much for her to imagine. Gretel knew her father was gone—dead or alive she couldn’t know—but that he was a man who had passed the post of redemption, about this she was sure. And Odalinde. Odalinde had come here for them, exclusively, almost as a sacrifice—or salvation even—for the horrors she’d brought upon the world. Gretel felt she was meant to die protecting Hansel and her. Perhaps she’s dying right now, she thought.

  But the Klahrs played a different role in this story. They weren’t part of this twisted history that her grandmother brought here so long ago. They were of this world. Back Country folk. Righteous and charitable. They had saved Gretel when her mother went missing (not dead, Gretel remembered again, her mother wasn’t dead). Even when Odalinde suggested the Klahrs had betrayed Gretel, in the car on the way to Deda’s, Gretel knew she was wrong. She knew they were as pure a people as she could ever expect to know, and Gretel would never bear losing them. Even if she found her mother—when she found her—Gretel would always need the Klahrs.

  “It’s okay, Gretel, I’ll be extra careful. Got my companion, you know.” Mr. Klahr unhinged the twin barrels of his shotgun and loaded the chamber. “I’ll be just fine.”

  Gretel’s fear hadn’t shaken Mr. Klahr, but Mrs. Klahr’s face was now serious and concerned. “Be careful, Georg. If something’s happening you can’t handle, you come back here.”

  Mrs. Klahr’s tone left no space for discussion, and Mr. Klahr simply nodded, then walked briskly to his truck and drove off.

  ***

  Anika opened the exit door and could see instantly that night would be arriving soon. She had freed herself from captivity, but her struggle to get home remained, and darkness would present a formidable obstacle. She had no idea where she was, and The System officer would surely be back soon, likely with that savage witch in tow. Wandering these foreign parts in the dark seemed all but suicidal.

  But as Anika stepped on the ground outside the bleak building, a flood of recognition overtook her. The smells and landscape, and even the siding and structure of the building itself, all became familiar. She knew this place. Perhaps not the exact earth she stood on, but for certain, she knew this ground. Or at least the area surrounding it. She looked to the sky and inhaled deeply, attempting to coax a memory from her senses. It was there, this memory, bulging at the surface of her mind; and from what she intuited, it wasn’t some stray thought from a single moment in her distant past—this memory was close, with a feeling of security and routine. It was a memory of Home.

  As Anika stood recollecting, she absently took note of the land extending before her at the back of the property, and how it proceeded quite differently from that in the front. When she’d arrived at the warehouse, she recalled the road leading to the front of the building had been long and flat, innocuous and rural and had ended rather lazily at the front door. But the back sloped steadily away from the house until, at a distance of perhaps thirty yards or so, the land dropped off dramatically, sloping at such an angle that she couldn’t see the ground below. The building, it seemed, was atop a large hill.

  Anika walked toward the edge of the slope, not knowing exactly what to expect, and at about halfway to the drop-off could see another building enter into view. It was just the roof at first, and then, as she proceeded closer to the edge, the whole of the large industrial complex below came into view. And the memory was complete. Anika knew exactly where she was.

  She jogged zombie-like the rest of the way to the edge of the hill and looked down, breathing spastically in disbelief, consciously slowing her inhalations to keep from hyperventilating.

  It was the cannery.

  There was no mistaking it. The rusted out factory shell and overly secure barbed wire fencing that strangled the grounds were as recognizable to Anika as her own reflection. She’d seen it a thousand times. It had been years, but her family—and at times, before the children, just she and Heinrich—had spent countless hours at Rifle Field picnicking and playing games, or, in their somewhat wilder and more adventurous days, shooting their guns through the fence at the broadside of the building. She was staring down on the Weinheimmer Cannery. It was impossible, Anika thought. Her house was right across the lake! She’d no way to get to it from this spot, of course—even if she were to get over the fence she’d need a boat to get across the water—but if not for the trees and cannery, she would be able to see her house from where she stood! She wouldn’t speculate as to why her father would have held her so close to her home until much later; her thoughts now were soaked of her children.

  During the times she’d spent at Rifle Field she’d barely even noticed the hill upon which she now stood, and she’d certainly never dreamed there had been a warehouse at the top. It made sense now of course, this warehouse—maintenance workers and others would have needed a place to store supplies and tools or whatever—but it just wasn’t something you thought of, particularly since the cannery had been closed now for so many years. And with the dense foliage of the Backwoods and its location so far from the main road, the warehouse simply wasn’t visible from any place she’d ever been. She supposed that had the imposing fence that surrounded the cannery not existed they may have explored Rifle Field further, but the fence had always been there, and they’d never even considered what was beyond it.

  Anika’s initial instinct was to scream for help. Their neighbors with the orchard, the Klahrs, lived on this side of the lake, had for decades, so it was possible—probable even—that they were aware of this place, and would have heard her voice if the sound carried right. Perhaps she’d even be heard at her own house. But Anika was disoriented and felt wildly insecure about her judgment of the distance. She’d never been great with directions and ranges to begin with, and after all she’d been through, she felt even less certain of her internal gauges. Besides, even if someone were to hear her, the noise would be faint and directionless, likely to be dismissed as far off children at play, or perhaps a bird. And, more importantly, for all Anika knew, the officer and the witch were rolling to a stop in front of the warehouse at this very moment, and the yelling would be as good as wrapping a chain around her neck and locking it to one of the warehouse shelves. Never again, she thought, I’ll die before ever being a prisoner again.

  But could she make it over the fence? As fences went, it wasn’t particularly tall, and the portion of it that formed the barrier was standard chain link; she assessed it would be easy enough for her to scale to the top. But it was at the top where things got problematic. Four or five rows of gruesome barbs formed a wide V-shape that ran the entire length of the fence, making it as difficul
t to get on top of it as across it. From where she stood now, the jagged steel canopy appeared as some giant metal crocodile, waiting for her entry into its agape jaws, perhaps promising to take her across the lake—a painful retelling of the fable about the mischievous gingerbread boy, Anika thought, only this time she would star in the ill-fated title role.

  But Anika knew a choice had to be made, and there were really only two options: head back down the long, dirt road on which she’d arrived, risking imminent darkness and the openness that seemed certain to expose her to The System officer; or, scale the fence in front of her and take her chances with the barbs and the awaiting lake beyond. She hadn’t swam in years, she suddenly realized, but she was comfortable enough in the water, and she trusted that instincts and desperation would take her the distance she needed.

  It was the fence that would be the challenge though, and if that was to be her choice—the fence—she would need to move quickly.

  Anika descended the hill and walked up to the fence, pushing the weight of her body against it and gripping her fingers through the links like a prisoner of war. It felt strong, stronger than she would have suspected after so many years. She could see through to Rifle Field the exact spots where she and her family used to lay out their blanket and set the picnic platters, Heinrich always meticulous in his combing of the patches to avoid settling on an ant hill. The grass was wildly overgrown now though it appeared certain areas had been recently trampled and used.

  This scenario, her precise position standing at the fence, reminded her of something from a nightmare: pursuing some elusive goal—in this case, her freedom—yet ultimately able only to observe it in silent frustration as the monsters steadily moved in.

  But this wasn’t a dream; here she was able to make choices, and Anika’s mind instantly sharpened as she assessed the fence and the possible ways over. The barbs atop were even more imposing at this close angle, and a panic started in Anika’s chest at the sight of the rusty aluminum thorns. She could bear the pain, she thought, but if she got caught—stuck—it would almost certainly spell the end.