Grimm Reapings

by R. Patrick Gates

  Jackie put an arm around his younger brother. "If you saw the Barbra Waters show, then you basically know it all. They pretty much covered all the bases. There isn't much else to know."

  Steve pulled away. "Yes, there is! Like, I want to know what my father was really like. I want to know exactly how he died and why the TV show said he helped Eleanor Grimm commit murder. I want to know why he was willing to sacrifice Mom and me!" He stood ramrod straight, his tearstained face defiant.

  Jackie found he had to appraise his little brother anew. He had changed a lot since the end of summer when Jackie had left for school. He now seemed older and more mature despite his emotional outbreaks. No matter how old or mature he had become, Jackie knew he couldn't tell Steve the whole truth about his father, Steve Sr., and what he did at Eleanor Grimm's bidding, but he had to tell him something.

  "Your father was a good guy who wasn't responsible for what happened or for what he did," he said as sincerely as possible.

  "But why did he do it?" Steve persisted.

  "I don't know, Steve. The wi- uh, Eleanor Grimmwasn't a normal human being. She could make people do things they normally would never do."

  Steve thought for a moment. "You were going to call her a `witch.' Was she?"

  Jackie shrugged. "For want of a better word, yeah, she was a witch."

  Steve circled the headstone, caressing its top absentmindedly with his left hand. "I still need to know what my dad was like. What was his personality like? What was his favorite color, his favorite food, his favorite song and movie? What did he say when he got mad? Was he funny?"

  Jackie thought for a moment. "I don't know. Let's see. He was ... he was ... cool. That's it. That's what I remember thinking when I first met him. He just seemed ... cool. I was, what, five when Mom married him? Compared to my real dad, yeah, he was cool. You know, you and I have that in common-not knowing our real fathers."

  Steve smiled at that.

  "Your dad used to let us do fun things. You know what a tight-ass Mom can be, but your dad could always loosen her up and suggest something fun."

  Steve's smile widened.

  "You know," Jackie told him, "I bet Mom will talk to you now that you're older. She can tell you more about him."

  "Don't you think I've tried that? Every time I've ever asked her about him she starts crying and tells me it's too painful to talk about. She's been doing that for as long as I can remember. Why should that change just because I'm older?" Steve pouted.

  "You haven't told her you saw the show? Well, you should. Things are different now. She's tried to protect you the only way she could, but now that you know the truth you two should talk."

  Steve nodded slowly. "Will you help me tell her? Will you be there?"

  "Sure," Jackie replied. He put his arm around Steve's shoulder again, and they started back to the house.

  "Is Chalice Silver your real name?"Jen asked as she handed Jackie's girlfriend a pan to towel-dry.

  Chalice took the pan, trying to ignore the slightly mocking tone ofJen's question.

  "No," she answered. "I had it legally changed."

  "Why did you do that?" Diane asked. She and Mrs. Holcromb were cutting up the pies and putting out cups and saucers for coffee. The kitchen was rich with the smells of warm pie and hot coffee brewing.

  "I didn't like my name," Chalice said.

  "What was it?" Jen asked.

  "Boring!" Chalice said more forcefully than she'd intended. An uncomfortable silence followed that seemed to stretch for minutes. Everyone in the kitchen silently went about their chores while avoiding looking at each other until Jackie and Steve returned.

  "Great!" Jackie said as he and Steve came in from the front hall. "Everyone together. Mom, you might want to sit down."

  Diane gave him one of her Mom looks that said: Quit fooling around.

  "No, seriously," Jackie said. "We've got something to tell you. "

  Diane looked from Steve to Jackie, tojen, and back to Steve. He wouldn't look her in the eye. She decided to take Jackie's advice and sat in a ladder-back wooden chair.

  "Should I, uh, leave?" Chalice asked.

  Jackie shook his head no and took her hand.

  Mrs. Holcromb didn't bother to ask; she turned and left, taking pies into the dining room.

  Jen stopped washing pots at the sink and looked at her brothers curiously.

  "Okay, kiddo, tell her," Jackie urged Steve.

  "Mom," Steve said, still not looking his mother in the eye, "I saw that TV show about what happened to you and my dad and Jackie and Jen thirteen years ago."

  Diane couldn't breathe. Though she had been preparing herself to tell Steve the truth, to hear it from him so unexpectedly came as a shock. She suddenly paled so much thatJen knelt by her side and took her hand.

  "Mom? You okay?" she asked, worry in her voice.

  Diane nodded and smiled weakly.

  "I'm sorry, Mom," Steve said, his voice trembling.

  Diane looked at Jackie and scowled. "You just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? After all these years, you're still testing?"

  Jackie turned bright red and held up his hands. "Wait a minute! For Christ's sake, Ma, why are you always so willing to blame me for everything? I had nothing to do with this. He just told me a few minutes ago, when we were outside, that he knew, so give me a break for once."

  "It doesn't matter how I saw or with who-I saw it," Steve said when his mother looked at him with those demanding eyes. He felt a strange sense of exhilaration at his newfound confidence and defiance; normally that look would have him spilling his guts. "I'm sorry if you're mad, but I had to know." After a moment he added quietly, but firmly, "I have a right to know."

  Diane looked away and quietly started to cry. Jen tried to hug her, but she pushed her daughter away. "No." She stood and gave Steve a look of utter betrayal, turning the gaze on Jackie at the last moment, causing him to visibly flinch, then back to Steve. "I would have told you. I was going to tell you this weekend, but you'd rather sneak around behind my back. That horrible show was garbage." Her tears came harder. "I don't know why everyone has to keep dragging up the past!" She barely got the last out in a series of sobs before hurrying from the room, followed closely by Jen.

  Jackie let out a barking laugh. "Now that was funny! She's the most guilty of not letting go of the past."

  Steve suddenly gave out such a high-pitched, nervous laugh it was more akin to a hyena's laugh than anything human. Jackie and Chalice were so startled by it they both jumped and Chalice let out a little shriek. Steve immediately clamped his hand over his mouth, as if that were the only way he could stop the weird laughter. Behind his hands it was reduced to an insane giggle that was infectious. Within seconds, Jackie and Chalice had joined him.

  "What's so funny?"Jeremy asked, coming in from the living room to investigate.

  None of them knew, and that made them laugh all the harder.

  An hour later and a degree of sanity had returned. Jen managed to calm her mother and talk to her. She had been aware of Diane's plan to tell Steve and had promised to help; she now reminded her mother of that and asked:

  "Really, Mom, what's the difference? If you think about it, this makes it easier for you."

  Diane slowly came around and was persuaded to return to the dining room table where everyone sat for coffee and pie, and where Steve unleashed a barrage of questions about his father. All of them were about what he was like, none about what he had done. Finally, after a pause in which he made a weak pass at his pumpkin pie with his fork, Steve asked the sixtyfour-dollar question, the one that Diane, herself, had struggled most with:

  "Why did he do it?"

  After a long pause, during which she chose her words carefully, she answered, "He wasn't responsible for the things he did. He was ... hypnotized. That's the best way I can explain it. We all were. Your father was a good man and he loved us all and we loved him. He was very excited about you being born. In fact, he was trying
to save us all when he was murdered. At the end he was doing the right thing, isn't that right, Jackie?"

  Jackie, his throat constricted with emotion, nodded at Steve.

  Steve seemed to consider that carefully before saying, "So the old lady, the witch, really made him do those things? It really wasn't his fault?"

  Jackie nodded, but didn't meet Steve's eyes. In stead, he winked at Diane and she smiled gratefully. "No. Like I told you outside, he was a good guy."

  "But the old lady did leave me all her money, right?" Steve looked at his mother. "Why did she do that?"

  Diane was stupefied by the question. Had Little Steve somehow missed the part of the Barbra Waters special where she had talked about Eleanor Grimm's plan to somehow transfer her soul into his body? She looked at Jackie, who appeared to be as equally mystified by Steve's question. Suddenly, it seemed to Diane that no matter what the reason for his ignorance, it was very important to let it continue. She rationalized that it was to save him any more emotional pain, but deep down she wasn't so sure of that motive. But, before anyone could blurt out the truth, Diane said, "Who knows what that old sicko was thinking? She was a monster, honey. A sick person. We'll never know exactly why she did anything. I don't know why we should even care anymore-she's dead and her money has let us have a pretty good life. It's put your sister through chef's school and it's paying for Jackie's college, and it'll pay for yours with plenty left over for you when you graduate. You know, it's funny, but Jen wouldn't have been able to afford this place if it hadn't been left to you. All in all, things have turned out okay."

  The answer seemed to satisfy Little Steve and he became quiet.

  Jeremy's younger sister, Debbie, started to say something, but Jeremy kicked her under the table. She gave him a cross look but went back to eating her pie. Jen brought up the topic of the latest movie releases and everyone eagerly contributed, suddenly glad to have something inconsequential to talk about.

  Steve and Diane remained quiet. She was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but-she hated to admit it-she also felt better. She couldn't understand now why she had acted so badly before. Jen was right; this had been easier. And talking about Steve's dad, sharing the good things, had made her feel so good! Too infrequently in the past thirteen years had she thought of Steve Sr. and not been overwhelmed with grief. For the first time in thirteen years of stress and worry over Steve discovering the family's horrible closet skeleton, Diane felt as if a weight had been lifted from her.

  Talking about it now, though, dredged up the past and she remembered:

  Shortly after midnight, in the first few minutes of All Saints' Day and within scant hours of her rescue from Eleanor Grimm's dungeon of horrors, Diane had given birth to Little Steve. What followed had been a proverbial three-ring media circus, which in her memory today existed only as a blur. During that time she had very little opportunity to process what had happened, or even to react to it. Taking care of Little Steve, and with Jackie recuperating in the hospital, she had no time to deal with anything. As Jackie got better and was released a few weeks after Halloween, her life had begun to slow and fall apart. It was as though she had been on a timed delay, running a few hours, then days, behind everyone else. It was during that time that the Villain had begun to haunt her sleeping and waking hours alike. She finally had a breakdown, nine months after Steve was born, and had to be hospitalized for over a month. During that time, one question had risen above the countless others that tormented her: What had Eleanor Grimm wanted with her baby?

  She had got a lot of answers, none of them satisfying. In the beginning the local police had assumed the obvious: Eleanor Grimm was like Jeffrey Dahmer-she liked to murder and eat people, at least thirteen children that they knew of. They figured she had intended to do the same with Little Steve. During Diane's hospital stay, several staff shrinks had theorized during sessions with her that Eleanor Grimm had been delusional, believing if she sacrificed Diane's new baby at the moment of birth, she could absorb his life force and grow young again. Theories of soul transference did not come along until later, when the first book was written. By then, Diane had already heard, and come to believe, that particular theory. But in the immediate aftermath of Grimm Memorials, it had all been too fantastic, too confusing, and might have overwhelmed her and kept her hospitalized indefinitely, if it hadn't been for Jackie. Without him she might never have understood and come to terms with any of it; he knew, long before the experts, of Eleanor Grimm's true intentions.

  When Diane had to be hospitalized, Jackie and Jen went to stay with her cousin, Sue Foley, and her brat six-year-old twins, Don and Dan, in Hadley, twenty miles away. During one of their weekly visits with Diane, as they all sat in the dayroom, coloring together, Jackie, still wearing a cast on one arm, had quietly told her the truth about Eleanor Grimm as only a child-and someone who'd had her inside his head-could. With Little Steve, whom doctors had let stay with Diane on the ward, sleeping in his bassinette nearby, Jackie had explained.

  "I know why the witch wanted Little Steve," he had said softly. "She thought she could put herself in his body. You know, like her brain, and she could take him over. She'd be a baby again, but with a grown-up brain, and she could start being bad all over again."

  "How do you know that?" she asked, fearful of the answer but knowing she had to hear it.

  Jackie answered without hesitation. The witch had been inside his mother's head; he knew she would understand. "When she was in my head, it was like we were on the phone, only instead of talking we were thinking, you know? And I could hear more than what she wanted me to hear, like sometimes you can hear stuff in the background on the phone, only this was real clear stuff. And most of it was about how she was gonna get born again in Little Steve."

  Except for the cryptic spells referring to soul transfer found in Eleanor Grimm's occult book, TheDemono- latria, there was no physical evidence of what Jackie said. But to Diane it had the sphincter-tightening ring of truth. Having had Eleanor Grimm inside her head and experiencing much the same things as Jackie, she had sensed as much right from the start but had been too grief-stricken and afraid to sort it out as Jackie had. It was then that Diane had made the decision to keep Little Steve in the dark, and had made Jackie and Jen swear never to tell him.

  Shortly after that, she had become aware that Jackie, withJen sometimes assisting, was regularly testing Little Steve-offering him pieces of raw meat, touching him with holy medals and crosses, and watching him constantly. When she finally got the reason why out of him, it only confirmed that she had made the right decision.

  "What if the witch didn't die in the creamy-terrium?" seven-year-old Jackie had asked her. "What if she did send herself into Little Steve at the last minute? What if she's in therewith him, right now?"

  The thought was an abomination and Diane wouldn't hear any more about it. She forbid Jackie to perform any more tests; yet, for a long time after, she often found herself watching her youngest son. The seed had been planted and despite her best efforts to kill it, grow it did. It was the one fear she had never spoken of to anyone other than Jackie, not even Dr. Gibbons, and she was glad now that Steve had somehow remained ignorant of it despite knowing all else.

  Taking advantage of a few moments of prolonged si- lence,Jackie announced he needed to go for a walk to work off his overeating. Chalice joined him, and this had a domino affect as others in the room quickly found somewhere else to be, leaving Steve and Diane alone at the large dining room table.

  Diane reached out a tentative hand and touched Steve's. He didn't look at her.

  "You okay?" she asked softly. He didn't answer, kept his eyes averted. Her voice trembling, she asked the question that most concerned her: "Do you hate me?"

  He shook his head and heavy teardrops dislodged from his eyes and rolled down both cheeks. "I don't hate you," he said softly. "I just wish you had told me a long time ago. I just wish ... I wish ... I wish I could've known him."

  "I wish
you could have, too," she replied. She'd done her best to describe what a wonderful man Steve Sr. had been. Despite never having talked about him, she had kept him strongly in her heart, trying to cherish the good memories and disregard the rest. She didn't tell her son that she was still working on the latter.

  Jackie led Chalice out to the front porch and down the driveway to the path he and Steve had taken earlier that led to the graveyard and barn beyond.

  "Wow! " Chalice said softly once they were outside.

  "Yeah," Jackie agreed.

  "I just. . ." She stopped, hands to her temples, consternation on her face. "I just can't imagine what it musta been like for you-alla you-to go through that. I mean ... boy! It's all so fuckin' incredible."

  Jackie didn't really want to go into it all again, but, unfortunately, he could see that Chalice wasn't going to let it go.

  "Yeah, it is. It was worse, right after, you know, when they thought I was nuts because I said Eleanor Grimm was a witch."

  "They thought you were nuts. Who's they?"

  "You know. The doctors. The cops. People," Jackie answered, shrugging.

  "Your mom?"

  Jackie smiled. "No. She was the only one who really listened to me, but then she knew what I was talking about."

  "And that was?" Chalice prodded, poking him in the side for his reluctance.

  "Ah, I don't know. I don't think I'm quite ready to give up all my secrets justyet,"Jackie said playfully, but couldn't avoid the ring of sincerity his words carried.

  "What secrets?" Chalice demanded. "I don't have any secrets from you."

  Jackie laughed mockingly.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Her face was growing red with anger.

  "You're the Queen of Secrets! "Jackie cried.

  "Name one!" she immediately challenged.

  "Piece of cake."

  "So do it."

  "Okay. How about the big secret of why you changed your name?"Jackie said, mincing his words to sharpen their cutting affect. He immediately regretted it when he saw the embarrassment on her face.