Grimm Awakening

by Bryan Smith

  Jack saw a tilting sign on a rusted metal post.

  It read, YOU ARE NOW LEAVING GREYTOWN.

  And, TURN AROUND NOW.

  Jack watched the sign diminish in the passenger side mirror.

  He looked at Lucien. “So, are you going to tell me about Mona?”

  Lucien kept his gaze on the road ahead. “What about her?”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “How stupid do you think I am. I mean, yeah, I’m a drunk. And so, yes, okay, I do have the occasional alcoholic blackout. But that doesn’t make me an idiot. My wife has something to with what happened to my father. It can’t just be coincidence that she took off months after my father’s supposed drowning-at-sea.”

  Lucien nodded. “You’re quick on the uptake, Jack. It’s not a coincidence.”

  Jack waited. “Well. What’s the deal, Lucien? Am I supposed to guess at everything? I’m tired of this ‘let’s-keep-Jack-in-the-dark-for-his-own-good’ bullshit. My father’s some kind of, I dunno, wizard, how’s that for freaky, and Mona...”

  Lucien glanced at Jack. “Isn’t human.”

  Jack covered his face with his hands. “Well, shit.”

  “We don’t know much about her, Jack. What we think we know is supposition. We think she got involved with you because of your father.”

  Jack’s laugh was a fragile, humorless thing. “Love had nothing to do with it.”

  Lucien looked at him with evident sympathy. “I’m sorry, Jack. But you need to deal with this. She wanted to get close to your father. He knew the forces arrayed against him were closing in and he knew they meant to strike soon. He just didn’t know from which direction the attack would come, which is why he did what he did. I showed you the picture--a recent one, by the way--because she is from this place. But she is no mere hellspawn. She is one of the devil’s own elite. And she is dedicated to bringing an end to the world you know. We must find her.”

  Jack’s hands fell away from his face. He peered into the approaching thunderwall and for a moment imagined himself disappearing inside it. He thought about that. Just ceasing to exist. The temptation was so alluring he thought he’d make a run for it when Lucien stopped the cruiser. But the memory of his father’s wrinkled face came to him and the impulse withered. He wanted to see that face again.

  They were close to the wall now. Jack felt the rumble of thunder deep within his bones. The electricity made his flesh tingle and instilled a sharp pain within each of his teeth. His eyeballs felt as though they were shrinking in their sockets. Lucien pulled the car to within a hundred yards of the wall and it loomed over them like a terrible, vengeful creature of the elements, Mother Nature’s darkest side.

  Lucien parked the car and they stepped out. They walked to within another fifty yards of the wall. They’d left the last section of paved road behind by now. At this distance, Jack could feel the wall pulling at him. He stumbled a step toward it, the suction it exerted was almost too powerful to resist. Lucien extracted a timepiece from an inner pocket of the jacket that had replaced his Hellpack blazer. It was a gold watch on a chain, a gift from Theodore Grimm. The most accurate timepiece in all of creation, according to the old man.

  The hellhound flipped the watch open. He nodded, his expression grim. “Almost time. If the portal doesn’t open in less than a minute, we’re fucked.”

  Jack grunted. “Thanks for breaking it to me gently.”

  Lucien didn’t reply, choosing instead to track the progress of the watch’s relentlessly progressing second hand. Jack heard the ticking like the timer on a bomb. Despite the mighty roar of the thunderwall, each tick reverberated in his ears like the blast of a cannon. He closed his eyes, muttered a silent prayer, and waited for the doom that seemed inevitable.

  Then Lucien said, “There it is!”

  Jack opened his eyes and looked. He saw it materializing just above the ground to their right, the same shimmering portal Andy had coaxed him through just twenty-four hours earlier. Or one just like it, at least. Jack’s heart thudded. It was all he could do not to take off at a run for the portal. He didn’t even know whether he should resist that impulse.

  He cocked an eyebrow at the hellhound. “Now?”

  Lucien nodded. “Yes.”

  The two men, human and hellhound, began to walk toward the portal.

  Then something changed. Jack could feel it in his bones and at the back of his skull, in every weeping pore of his weary body. Something was wrong. The ground rumbled beneath their feet. Lucien’s eyes widened with alarm and he yelled, “Run!”

  But Jack was already running.

  Lucien’s voice was brittle with terror: “Something’s coming! Something’s trying to stop us!”

  As if in answer to the hellhound’s cries, the sky darkened behind the portal and something began to materialize in front of their only means of escape. Jack convulsed as a wave of cold swept through him. The desert storm humidity of before was gone. Jack felt like a naked man stumbling across a frozen tundra. The thing taking shape before them was like a black slash wound against the flesh of the world. Its curled tail rotated like a twister about to touch down. Its eyes were red and malevolent. There was deeper darkness within the darkness that resembled a grinning mouth, a mouth that looked wide enough to open up and swallow them whole.

  A terrible voice that seemed to obliterate everything else spoke inside their heads. “Such audacity.” Its laugh was like the sound of an earthquake ripping earth asunder. Jack thought his head might explode. “I am fear itself. I am hate and I am murder. I am war, famine, and disease. I am everything that powers your nightmares. I am the bringer of the ultimate blood cleansing and my time is coming. You will not stop me. You cannot stop me.”

  That laugh again. A bomb detonating inside their heads. Jack clamped his hands over his ears and sank to his knees. He sobbed and hot tears spilled down his face. He thought of the gun in his shoulder holster and despaired. Bullets would be as nothing against this awesome force.

  It spoke again: “Would-be usurpers. Plastic heroes. You amuse me. As do the meddlings of the old man. I will deal with him in time. As for you, go forth and attempt redemption. It is useless. You are of no concern to me. When my time on earth comes, your suffering will surpass the suffering of any soul. It will be endless.”

  Then it was gone.

  Jack needed several moments just to catch his breath. His eyes were clenched shut, but he heard Lucien panting next to him. He managed at last to unscrew his eyes and blinked at a landscape devoid of devils. The freezing cold was gone, the heat sweeping back in. The portal was still before them, but it was fading, the swirls of multi-colored light rotating at a slower and slower speed.

  Lucien gasped and lurched to his feet. “Jack! Run!”

  With Lucien’s assistance, Jack got upright again. Then they moved toward the dying portal as quickly as they could manage. They hunched their heads down and stepped through it at the last possible moment. An instant after they disappeared, the portal was gone and the empty cruiser sat at the edge of the thunderwall for an eon.

  15.

  Jack opened his eyes and saw an expanse of desert and scrubgrass. A ribbon of faded asphalt stretched endlessly in either direction. Something glinted against the harsh glare of the sun to Jack’s right. A road sign. He stumbled in that direction. As he neared the sign, he saw a man sitting on the road’s shoulder. He had long black hair and wore a leather jacket. The man looked at him as he approached.

  “Hello, Jack.”

  Jack squinted. “Lucien?”

  The man laughed. “Same old Jack. Always so quick on the uptake.”

  It was Lucien, but it wasn’t the Lucien he’d known in hell. This Lucien was a human man. Or at least he looked like one. The formerly protruding, ridged forehead was now a normal, smooth human forehead. No steam emerged from the nostrils of his newly straight and narrow nose when he breathed--nor did his breath reek of the graveyard. The hair was long, yes, but now it didn’t sprout from every pore of his face
. In place of the glimmering yellow eyes were two orbs of the brightest blue Jack had ever seen--brighter even than Andy O’Day’s eyes. Lucien was a good-looking man.

  “You look like you stepped out of a goddamn GQ ad.”

  Lucien grinned. Then the grin became a snarl as his ears lengthened and his jaw distended. Jack gaped as thick black fur suddenly erupted from the hellhound’s pores. A moment later the transformation reversed itself.

  Lucien’s grin was gone. “A reminder. I’m still what I am. A shapeshifter. Hellspawn granted human form on earth.” He moved a step closer to Jack and laid a hand on his shoulder. “And I still serve the higher purpose.”

  It was then that Jack remembered the words of that terrible creature. “Oh shit. Oh fuck..” His heart raced and he was unable to breathe for a moment. Then he looked Lucien in the eyes. “That thing...it said it would...deal with my father. What...what...”

  Lucien squeezed his shoulder. “Strength. Remember what Theodore said. And keep something else in mind, friend. That thing was afraid of us.”

  Jack gaped at him. “Afraid? Of us?” He shook his head and laughed. “Look, Lucien, I know you’re wise and all, you’ve proved that, okay? But you’re what we earth people call ‘stark-raving batshit’. That thing fears us the way I fear fuzzy little fucking kittens.”

  “Wrong.” Lucien’s gaze was intense and unwavering. “It could have killed us, Jack. It should have killed us.” A hint of a smile played at the edges of his mouth. “It left us alive to make a big show of how unafraid it is. It had to prove to itself how unafraid it is. But you and me know the truth. It’s afraid of us.”

  Lucien slapped Jack on the arm. “Don’t let it trouble you. We’ve got a big job to do. We’re not going to let the old man down, are we?”

  Jack reached into a pocket and closed his hand around the Zippo.

  “No. We won’t let him down.”

  “Good. Now.” Lucien cast his gaze down the road, holding a hand to his forehead to allay the sun’s glare. “Where do we start?”

  Jack looked at the road sign. He laughed.

  It read, LAS VEGAS 100 MILES.

  He smiled. “Sin city.”

  Lucien laughed, too. “Oh, yeah? Is that what they call it? Yeah, think I’ve heard of it. A lot of people in hell lost their souls there. Let’s see just how sinful this bad bitch of a city really is, what do you say?”

  “As good a place as any to start, I guess. Lot of bars in Vegas.” Jack looked at Lucien. “Lot of girls, too.”

  Lucien smiled, but there was a rueful glint in his eyes. “Jack, Jack, Jack. You sure you can handle this quest for redemption thing? Maybe you don’t have what it takes.”

  Jack’s gaze didn’t waver. “But I do, Lucien. You’ll see. You’ll just have to be patient with me. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink or three.”

  Lucien shrugged. “I reckon I could use them.”

  After that, they didn’t say anything for a while.

  And they set off together down that long road

  PART TWO: BAD CRAZINESS

  1.

  Jack Grimm opened his eyes.

  Another room he didn’t recognize. Once again, he had no idea where he was or how he had come to be in this place. This was annoying enough in itself, given that he’d come to in hell--the literal Hell of the bible--after his last alcohol-induced blackout. But it was doubly irritating because he knew he’d made a point of refraining from booze when he’d set out with Lucien last night.

  He didn’t feel hungover. Groggy, yes, but he had none of the telling physical symptoms he was familiar with from so many bouts with the bottle. He struggled to focus his thoughts and clear his vision, but everything remained hazy--he saw the world the way a man would just beneath the surface of a body of water. It felt as if he’d been drugged.

  He heard a voice--one he belatedly recognized as his own--say: “I feel like I’ve been drugged.”

  Whoa, that’s freaky.

  He heard his own voice as something disconnected from himself. It, too, was like something emanating through a filter. The distorted words seemed to wash slowly through the room, echoing and heavy with reverb, the sort of thing that would sound cool on an old psychedelic rock album.

  Then there was a brief tinkle of musical laughter from someone he couldn’t see. A woman. There was something distantly familiar about the sound, something that triggered a faint alarm somewhere within him, but he couldn’t place it at the moment. But he had a dim suspicion he might be terrified right now were he not still under the influence of whatever drug he’d been slipped.

  He scanned the opulent room to the best of his ability, which was somewhat inhibited due to his being prone on the bed. He knew he should get up and investigate, figure out where he was and what he was doing here, but he seemed unable to move. Probably this was the fault of the drug. But then he tilted his head back and cast his gaze upward--and saw that he was handcuffed to the bed’s shiny brass headboard.

  Something heavy and foul seemed to slide down his gullet and lodge in his stomach. This was the feeling of finding yourself unexpectedly helpless with your life likely in peril. Jack had experienced the feeling on more occasions than he liked to remember. His gaze went to the foot of the bed, where he saw that his ankles were tied to two corners of the four-poster bed. Perhaps more discomfiting was the realization that he was, in fact, bare-ass naked.

  The room was big. Bigger than big. Jack figured he was either in some rich person’s penthouse apartment or he was in a presidential suite in a luxury hotel, the kind of place where an oil tycoon or princess would stay when visiting a foreign land. About a gazillion or so miles to his left, beyond a dining table approximately the length of a small yacht, was a huge fireplace. This wasn’t the ornamental brand of fireplace one would expect in Nevada. It looked like the sort of thing an old-time engineer would shovel coal into to power a steam-driven locomotive. Jack could feel the heat generated by the five-alarm blaze even from this great distance and he had to wonder what sort of demented architect would include a gargantuan working fireplace in a hotel or penthouse in the middle of the goddamn desert.

  One in dire need of being strangled by me, he thought, becoming aware of the sheen of sweat covering his body, making his flesh adhere uncomfortably to the single bedsheet stretched taut across the large mattress.

  Visible through a set of glass doors at the far end of the room was a long balcony that overlooked a vast sea of twinkling lights. Las Vegas at night--at least from this perspective--briefly looked like any other big city, a place with all the usual dangers and amusements. But this was an illusion.

  Vegas was a bright, neon-lit wonderland of vice, Disneyland for lovers of booze, whores, and gambling. And never mind what the civic leaders tried to tell you--the mob was still well-entrenched here.

  Is that what happened to me? Jack wondered. Did I offend some mafia prick somehow?

  The question was disturbing. Even more disturbing was the lack of an answer. He knew too well the kind of reckless behavior he was capable of when he was out getting hammered. He was also too well aware his good intentions--on the rare occasions when he actually had some--often didn’t mean squat. He’d pledged many times to remain sober when he had important business to attend to. Sometimes he even managed to stay true to his word, but frequently he did not. Last night looked to have landed squarely in the latter category.

  Jack frowned.

  No...that was wrong.

  The effects of the drug were wearing off. Everything was coming into sharper focus, including his thoughts. His mind affirmed what he’d sensed upon waking up. He wasn’t hungover. He hadn’t gone on a bender. So why couldn’t he remember anything beyond leaving his room at the MGM Grand with Lucien? Perhaps they’d been ambushed in the hallway, brought down by heavy tranquilizers.

  Had to be something like that. Now that the drug, whatever it was, was loosening its grip on him, he began to feel real fear. He couldn’t imagine who might have done th
is to them. He wondered what had happened to Lucien, whether the hellhound was alive or dead. Jesus, what a couple of hapless crusaders against the forces of evil they’d turned out to be.

  Jack felt a twinge of pain between his shoulder blades. A stinging sensation. Probably where the tranquilizer dart had hit him.

  He groaned. “What in the blue fuck has happened to me?”

  Jack didn’t expect an answer, so he was unable to suppress a small yelp of surprise when a voice spoke to him: “You’ve met your destiny, Jack.”

  Jack’s eyes went wide. His mouth opened to speak, but he could muster no words. He was too stunned to summon forth anything coherent. That voice, which he immediately recognized as the one that’d produced the earlier laughter, was one with which he’d once had an intimate familiarity.

  It was a voice he hadn’t heard in ten years.

  He sensed movement to his right and turned his head to see her walk into view. His heart pounded at the sight of her. Clad only in a tiny silk nightgown that covered just the tops of her bronzed thighs, she was as beautiful as the last day he’d seen her, perhaps more so. Her blue eyes gleamed with amusement, and her lips, which were painted a bright red, formed a smug smile.

  “It’s been fun watching you fumble your way through your pathetic life all these years, Jackie dear, but, alas...” And now her smile broadened. “All good things must come to an end.”

  She laughed. “Although in your case I suppose I should amend the cliche--all pitiful things must come to an end.”

  Jack at last recovered the ability to speak.