Barbra Waters, in close-up, smiles at her audience. "Welcome back. I would like, once again, to take a moment to warn our viewers of the graphic and grisly nature of tonight's broadcast. Parental discretion is advised."
Ms. Waters's face is replaced with a picture of sixyear-old Jackie Nailer.
"Eleanor Grimm's last kidnap victims were Jackie and Jennifer Nailer and their mother, Diane Nailer. Eleanor, as I told you before the break, was aided in doing so by Steven Nailer, a teacher and aspiring poet, who was also Diane Nailer's husband, and Jackie and Jennifer's stepfather. Little did the mad witch, Eleanor Grimm, know when she kidnapped little Jackie Nailer and his sister, Jennifer, she was sealing her own fate, as life would imitate art and she would end up like the fairy-tale witch from Hansel and Gretel."
The scene shifts to footage from when the story originally broke. A beaten and battered Jackie Nailer is being carried down the steps on a stretcher, holding tightly on to his sister Jennifer's hand and surrounded by police officers.
The picture shrinks, as the scene cuts back to the studio, and becomes the backdrop for a set where Barbra Waters sits in a leather chair facing a grown-up Jackie Nailer.
"That's my brother!" Little Steve Nailer exclaimed excitedly to Randy and Jimmy.
The entire Gothic room turned as one and finally looked at Jackie. "Cool," said Joker-girl, and the rest of them nodded and turned back to the TV.
'jen! Your brother's on!" several friends yelled to her in the kitchen. She bustled out, carrying a Mexican taco dip and placing it on a table before standing and watchingJackie's interview. She smiled. He was so cute. This was bound to be quite a boost to his love life on campus.
When the video of Jackie being carried out of Grimm Memorials came on, Diane Nailer's breath caught in her lungs and stayed there until the screen showed Jackie all grown up, sitting with Barbra Waters to answer questions. Then she started to cry.
Barbra Waters smiles at Jackie. "Do you remember that?" she asks.
He smiles back uncertainly and shakes his head. "Not really," he replies. He blushes and his face becomes shiny under the bright lights.
"When the police questioned you later, at the hospital, you said a witch killed everyone. At first people didn't listen to you, did they?"
Jackie shakes his head no.
"It wasn't until some time later that authorities investigating Eleanor Grimm discovered that she was, in fact, deeply involved in occult and satanic practices that she believed to be ancient rites of black magic, dating all the way back to the Druids. But you had already known that...."
Jackie shrugs, smiling sheepishly and blushing more deeply.
"How?" Ms. Waters asks, popping her hands, palms up, into the air as if tossing a bundle to Jackie.
"H-how did I know she was a witch?" Jackie asks hesitantly.
Waters nods.
"I guess because she could do things. She-she," he stammers and hesitates, searching for the right words. Suddenly he is overcome by a rush of emotion. "She could do things to your mind," he says finally, tearfully. The camera silently focuses in and lingers on Jackie wiping the tears from his eyes, looking embarrassed and uncomfortable. After several moments it fades out and back in on Barbra Waters on the main set, at her desk.
"Do not be too quick to discount Jackie Nailer's account of Eleanor Grimm's powers. He was not alone in witnessing, or telling, about them."
The screen shifts to a grainy video of a distraught woman sitting at a table.
"This is police video of the initial interview with Linda Lafleur, immediately after her children were abducted by Eleanor Grimm."
... my fairy godmother," the woman is saying, her voice on the edge of hysteria. "If you just find my fairy godmother, she has my boys." A policewoman gently asks Mrs. Lafleur to start over and she sighs, then begins speaking, in a monotone at first, then more expressively, telling how her boys had been attracted to the fairy-tale motif going on in the mall and how they had been playing with the Tweedle-Dee and TweedleDum characters when her fairy godmother had shown up and granted her the wish of some rest from her high-energy boys. At that point in the interview, Linda Lafleur stops and repeats "my fairy godmother" over a few times. Suddenly a dawning look of realization breaks across her face and she lets out a heart-wrenching half scream, half moan.
Like others in the room, Jackie shivered at the sound of Linda Lafleur's agonizing verbalization. He was glad the piece had been edited so that her interview followed his comments; they seemed to make him appear less loony. He looked around the room. Everyone was intent on watching Barbra Waters play more interviews with people who had experienced hallucinations while in the presence, or even the general vicinity, of Eleanor Grimm. No one was interested in him-not while the show was on anyway. He wasn't looking forward to the next commercial.
"This is fuckin' wack!" Jimmy Walsh said loudly, commenting on the string of interviews attesting to the hypnotic powers of Eleanor Grimm.
"This is really creepy," Randy Gaste muttered, seemingly lost in deep thoughts of his own.
Steve Nailer watched the interviews and listened to the witnesses and had the feeling he'd heard these stories before. Maybe he had overheard his mother and siblings talking about them, long ago when he was little, too little for them to think he could understand or remember. And he hadn't understood, or remembered, until today. Something suddenly occurred to him. His birthday was tomorrow, November 1. He had been born on the day after Halloween, thirteen years ago-the day after his mother and Jackie and Jennifer were rescued from Eleanor Grimm! It was possible he could have memories from then; weren't there people who remembered being in their mother's womb?
Next, Steve and his friends watched in mute fascination as Barbra Waters, with the help of some very graphic pictures, recounted how Eleanor Grimm had kidnapped thirteen prepubescent boys, plus the pregnant Diane Nailer, in order to fulfill some crazy occult ritual. The murders of Betty Boone, Margaret Eames and her parents, and Joe tonally and Steve Nailer were described and illustrated in gory detail.
"And then Eleanor Grimm, a monstrous character straight from the worst of the horrific fairy tales of the famous storytelling brothers whose name she shared and from whom she claimed descent, went to work on the thirteen prepubescent boys she had worked so hard to attain."
In succession the screen again shows the photographs of the thirteen boys, starting with Jerry Hall and ending with Jackie Nailer. Barbra Waters does the voice-over.
"She managed to do away with twelve of the boys, sacrificing them to her evil gods, in a ritual invoking butchery and cannibalism. Each of the little boys ended his existence in the funeral home's crematorium oven. But when she got to the last boy, little Jackie Nailer, she got a big surprise."
The scene shifts to a close-up of Jennifer Watson sitting with Barbra Waters. As the camera focuses in on Jen, Barbra voices over:
"This is Jackie Nailer's sister, Jennifer-now Jennifer Watson. Thirteen years ago she, too, was kidnapped. Before Eleanor Grimm could sacrifice her, she and her brother, Jackie, managed to take a page from the fabled Grimm brothers themselves and do away with the wicked witch, Eleanor Grimm."
The scene cuts to a close-up of Barbra Waters.
"Can you tell me what happened that Halloween thirteen years ago? How did you and your brother Jackie manage to kill Eleanor Grimm and push her into her own crematorium oven?"
Jen's face refills the screen. "I'm sorry, but I can't, actually. I have no recollection of that day, or of several weeks before it. I have complete amnesia concerning that part of my past."
The scene cuts back to Waters and Jackie.
"Your sister says she has complete amnesia about what happened at Grimm Memorials. Do you believe her?" Barbra Waters asks provocatively.
Jackie gives her a look that, translated into a word, would be a synonym for sphincter, and says, "Yes, of course I do. Why wouldn't I?"
Close-up of Barbra Waters smiling and nodding with a look as if to say
, "I understand you don't want to deride your sister, but we know the truth." Verbally, she says, "What did happen that day? How did you, a six-year-old, and your sister, who was ten, manage to overcome Eleanor Grimm, who was over six feet tall, and push her into her own crematorium oven?"
Jackie looks into the camera ...
And out at himself as he sat watching the show with Chalice and her friends. He could remember exactly what he was thinking at that moment: he was remembering how Jen had been completely under the witch's spell and had helped her capture several of the sacrificed boys, but no one except him knew. Jen, because of her amnesia, didn't even know. Because of that, he had made her the hero. It had worked thirteen years ago and it worked again now. He had to smile at how convincingly he told the story of how Jen, remembering the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, lured Eleanor Grimm over to look in the crematorium furnace and then, with his help, pushed her in and burned her alive.
'Jeri! You're my hero!" Debbie Watson exclaimed, jumping from her chair and throwing her arms around her sister-in-law. "You killed the big bad witch. You're the hero of Munchkin Town!" Everyone, includingJen, laughed, then quieted asJen reappeared on the screen with Barbra Waters. Jen watched and made a mental note to kill Jackie; she had begged him not to tell that same old lame Hansel and Gretel Jen-saves-the-day story.
"You must know that your brother says you are the hero who saved his, and your mother's, life and yet, you can't remember any of it."
A shot of Jen smiling apologetically and shrugging.
Barbra Waters smiles at her patronizingly. "Yet, despite your professed amnesia, your connection with Eleanor Grimm has grown of late, hasn't it?"
The camera shows Jen blushing and silently searching for words. The camera doesn't give her time and pans back to Ms. Waters, who addresses the camera as if Jen were no longer there.
"In an ironic twist of fate, the hero of the Grimm Memorials saga, Jennifer Nailer, now owns the former buildings and land that made up the Grimm Memorials Funeral Home." Barbra Waters turns in her seat to face a new camera angle, and the backdrop screen again shows the picture of Jen and Jeremy on the front porch of the Magic Forest Bed-and-Breakfast, formerly Grimm Memorials Funeral Home, waving, arm in arm. "They have converted the place into a bed-andbreakfast that opens a year from today, on Halloween in fact, and they are already taking bookings."
The scene shifts to a return of the aerial shot of Grimm Memorials. "It would seem that all's well that ends well," Barbra Waters continues as the camera returns to her sitting at her desk. "But what of Eleanor Grimm's motives? Why did she sacrifice so many children? What did she want with the pregnant Diane Nailer and her unborn baby? And, even stranger, why did Eleanor Grimm leave her entire estate, valued at close to a million dollars, to the unborn child of Diane and Steven Nailer?
"Some answers when we return from this brief message."
Little Steve Nailer was unsure if he had just heard Barbra Waters correctly. The gape-mouthed looks his friends were giving him indicated he had.
"You're a fuckin' millionaire?" Jimmy Walsh sputtered, Coke dribbling down his chin.
Randy, reading Steve's reaction, asked, "Did you know about this?"
Steve shook his head and stared at his friend.
"Dude!" Jimmy Walsh cried, jumping up. "You're rich! It's like you won the fuckin' lottery!"
"Yeah..." Steve said weakly, and was saved from any further comment by Ms. Waters's return on-screen.
"Why did Eleanor Grimm want the pregnant mother, Diane Nailer, who was on the very brink of giving birth? And why did she leave her riches to Diane's son, Steve Junior, with Diane named as executor until Steven turns eighteen? We tried to talk to Diane Nailer-who has used the money to finance her daughter's purchase of the Grimm property and its conversion to a bed-and-breakfast, not to mention paying for her son Jackie's college education, and her youngest son Steve Jr.'s host of private tutors who teach him at home-he does not attend public school."
The backdrop screen shows Diane Nailer getting out of her car at a supermarket and spying the cameras approaching. She holds her hand in front of her face and runs into the store.
"Mrs. Nailer refused our calls and attempts to interview her in person." The camera draws into a close-up and Barbra looks deep into the eyes of America.
"What we do know is this-investigators found evidence that Eleanor Grimm, the wicked witch of Northwood, Massachusetts, believed she could attain immortality through the ritualistic atrocities she committed, and not just the immortality of fame, but true, undying immortality. But how was she to do this? This is where Mrs. Diane Nailer, Jen and Jackie's mother, comes in. Kidnapped with the help of her own husband, Diane Nailer was pregnant. Investigators came to the conclusion, after studying an ancient book of the occult known as the Demonolatria, which was found in Eleanor Grimm's possession at the scene of the crime, that she believed she could transfer her soul into Diane Nailer's unborn baby, Steve Nailer Jr., via the sacrifices and rituals she performed."
The scene cuts to a close-up of a law enforcement officer with white hair and glasses. White lettering at the bottom of the screen identifies him as Northwood County Sheriff Don Leblanc. The scene shifts to a wide shot of Barbra Waters and Sheriff Leblanc sitting in leather chairs, facing each other.
"Sheriff Leblanc," Ms. Waters starts, lisping badly, "do you believe Eleanor Grimm would have been successful in transferring her soul to that of the unborn Steve Nailer Jr. if she had been able to complete her sacrifices and rituals?"
Sheriff Leblanc rolls his eyes. "Barbra, please. She was a crazy woman. Just 'cause someone believes something doesn't make it true. 'Cept in the case of God, a' course," he adds, uncomfortably.
Cut to the same scene, but Jackie is in the opposing chair.
"Tell me, Jackie, do you think Eleanor Grimm could have really transferred her soul, her personality, into your unborn stepbrother, Steve, if you and your sister hadn't stopped her?"
All the while Ms. Waters is asking the question the camera glides into a close-up of Jackie until his face is framed on the screen.
He opens his mouth with a deep breath, as if to launch into a lengthy answer, but then thinks better of it and simply says, "I don't know."
Little Steve Nailer sat rigidly in the broken-down recliner, staring fixedly at the screen as the program went to commercials again, but he wasn't really seeing it. He was aware of Jimmy Walsh and Randy Gaste looking at him, but that wasn't what kept him frozen, his breath racing in and out of his lungs, his heart hammering in his chest so hard he could hear it thudding in his ears. His mind was a jumble of thoughts trying to get a handle, once again, on what he'd just heard. He was confused-had he heard correctly? Had he misunderstood?
"Dude," Jimmy Walsh said with quiet awe, "that crazy bitch left you all her money 'cause she thought she could stealyour body! Wow! That is so wack! It's like somethin' out of a horror movie."
Jimmy's words had a calming affect on Steve. Even so, he still struggled with the idea-like Jimmy said, it was like something out of a horror movie.
Jimmy winked at him. "Hey, Steve, you think maybe that old broad did get inside you and take you over? I mean, how would you know? It would certainly explain a lot, know what I mean?"
Steve shook his head, confused. "No, no, I don't," he said.
"All right, Jimmy, cut it out!" Randy said, anger rising in his voice, confusing Steve even more.
"Cut what out, man?" Jimmy asked, feigning innocence. "It makes sense, don't it? He wants to know the truth about himself, don't he? Well, I think the truth is that that old witch-bitch did take over his bodythat's why he acts like such a fag!"
Randy shot to his feet. "Why do you always have to be such an asshole?" he shouted at Jimmy.
Before Jimmy could answer, Steve dropped his Coke and gum and bolted from the room and the house. Ignoring Randy's calls for him to come back, he grabbed his bike and mounted it with a running start, pedaling furiously away from Jimmy Walsh's mocki
ng laughter.
Jackie listened to the muttered comments of Chalice's friends upon learning of Eleanor Grimm's alleged plan. Looking at their faces, he was disturbed at the eagerness and excitement in each eye. He had to wonder about these Gothic friends he found himself so attracted to; they loved horror and anything to do with dark fantasies and such, but he wondered how they would feel in a real horror situation such as he had experienced at the hands of Eleanor Grimm.
Those thoughts and the TV program brought back a rush of memories he hadn't dwelt on in a long time. The strongest of the memories, sparked by Barbra Waters's question, was of him and Jen with the newborn Little Steve in the hospital room, trying to feed him raw liver to see if the witch, Eleanor Grimm, had managed to transfer her soul into the infant's body. He remembered the relief he felt when Little Steve had started to cry.
But that relief had not lasted. Over the next five years, Jackie had found himself constantly testing Little Steve, looking for some indication that Eleanor Grimm might be inside his half brother. The last time was when Little Steve was five, and Jackie showed him a graphic documentary on the life and cannibalistic crimes ofJef- frey Dahmer. Little Steve had freaked out and had nightmares for aweek. Jackie's mother found out and told Dr. Gibbons, who then devotedJackie's therapy to helping him overcome his fear that Eleanor Grimm had been more than just a criminally insane woman. Eventually, with Dr. Gibbons's help, he did come to the realization that Eleanor Grimm was truly dead. Dr. Gibbons tried to take that further and get him to admit that Eleanor Grimm had not had any "special" powers and that he had either hallucinated them at the time, or added them through the years and the process of dream-memory modification.
Grimm Reapings Page 4