Grimm Reapings

by R. Patrick Gates

  "I don't mind," the latter replies sweetly.

  "I need a drink and something to eat," Trevor mutters.

  Steve parked the car next to Jen's Volvo and he and Diane got out. Debbie Watson was waiting on the front porch. Steve went to her, took both her hands in his.

  "Have you found anything for me?"

  Debbie nodded. "Not far from here. A little boy. You could take him tonight."

  They kissed and, arm in arm, followed Steve's mother, who didn't seem to notice their affections, into the house.

  Tony Salmondello couldn't sleep even though it was well past his regular bedtime. He was too excited. Tomorrow was going to be his eighth birthday and he couldn't wait; his father had promised to take him to Six Flags Amusement Park. Tony tossed and turned and stared at the Batman posters that covered his walls. Tony loved Batman the way some kids love a "blanket'" or a teddy bear. He was obsessed with the comic book hero and found security in carrying the image of the Caped Crusader everywhere he went, whether it was on his lunch box, backpack, sneakers, or his underwear.

  Ever since hearing that Six Flags had a Batman roller coaster, Tony had been bugging his father to take him. "You're too young," had been the standard answer until this week when his parents had announced the plans for his birthday. It seemed age eight was old enough for Six Flags. It immediately took on magical qualities for Tony and became his new lucky number.

  He closed his eyes again, trying to force sleep so that the morning would arrive sooner. It was futile. Within seconds his lids opened again; like the spring-loaded head of ajack-in-the-box they popped up. He noticed his room was brighter than it had been a few moments ago and was growing brighter still as he watched.

  He sat up in bed and looked out his bedroom window. The glass was illuminated, as was the night sky beyond it, as if there were a full moon in the sky brighter than any full moon Tony had ever seen before. He slid out of bed, padding barefoot across the cool wood floor to the window. He pulled back the red and black Batman curtains and couldn't believe his eyes.

  "The Bat Signal!"

  There it was, hanging in the midnight sky like a yellow ball with a jagged piece ripped out of it-the silhouette of a bat. The whining, high-pitched whirring sound of a high-speed engine zoomed overhead and a fast shadow passed over the yard. Tony shoved his face against the glass, straining to see if it was the Batplane. A moment later he squealed with delight as the latter glided down to make a perfect landing in his backyard.

  The glass cockpit slid open with a whoosh! and the Dark Knight himself leaped out. He stood, legs apart, hands on hips, and looked directly at Tony. His lips never moved, but Tony could hear the World's Greatest Detective's voice, loud and strong and just as he imagined it should sound.

  "Tony, I need your help. Robin is off fighting with the Teen Titans and I need you to stand in for him. The joker's afoot, planning to flood Gotham with deadly laughing gas yet again. Hurry! I've got a spare costume for you in the Batplane!"

  Tony needed no more encouragement. Not bothering to change out of his Batman pj's when he'd just be putting on the costume of Robin, the Boy Wonder! he ran through his dark house, unheard by his sleeping parents, and out to the backyard and his waiting hero. . ... . . . .. .. . .. . .

  A thick, wet mist had rolled into the yard by the time Tony made it there. It shrouded the Batplane, making it appear as some giant shadowy bird lurking overhead, waiting to peck at him. A little unnerved by its size, Tony sidled up to its massive landing gear and looked around for the Batman.

  "Are you ready, Robin?"

  Tony spun around. Batman was standing a few feet away. In his hands he held a Robin, the Boy Wonder costume that appeared to be Tony's exact size.

  "Yes, sir," Tony said, deepening his voice to sound appropriately heroic. "I'm ready."

  "Good. First, you've got to don your crime-fighting costume, then we'll go pay a visit to the joker and his gang of clowns."

  Batman held up the Robin shirt for Tony to put on, but when Batman slipped it over his head, he couldn't find the neck or armholes. It smelled really bad, too, like medicine, and the smell was making him dizzy.

  "I can't breathe!" Tony cried, struggling against the shirt and descending unconsciousness.

  "I know," Batman said.

  Within moments little Tony Salmondello passed out, his head thick with chloroform fumes.

  Lines. Black lines becoming ... blackness.

  Eyes open again. Upside down. Upside-down room. Through the lines ... which were really ...

  Bars.

  I'm in a cage like at the zoo.

  Tony Salmondello blinked and his head throbbed with the minute movement.

  I'm in an upside-down cage.

  He blinked again and got his bearings. No. He wasn't.

  I'm upside down in a cage.

  Feeling like he might puke any second, Tony rolled onto his stomach. His head, which had been hanging over the end of the low wooden table he was lying on, thundered with pain at being disrupted. The pain brought his nausea to a peak and the contents of his stomach gushing out of him and onto the floor of the cage.

  I'm in a cage?The reality of his location finally sank in.

  But where's Batman? The memory of the magical moment he had met his idol left him befuddled.

  What the heck happened?

  He closed his eyes, as much to remember as to try and stifle the nausea rising in his gullet again. One minute he had been with Batman in the backyard about to don Robin's costume and go on an adventure ... but the Robin suit had smelled bad ... and that was the last thing he could remember until he woke up here, upside down in a cage.

  Like an animal. A rush of fear and panic brought out what little remained in his stomach.

  This must be some diabolicalplan of the Joker's. Batman will rescue me, Tony thought, retching.

  Batman is a comic book hero, moron!

  The new voice was his father's, and in the past year Tony had begun scolding himself with it whenever he had succumbed to acting like a "baby" instead of being a "man" as his father was always admonishing him to do. Acting like a baby included thinking that comic book heroes and characters, or movie monsters for that matter, were real.

  "Don't be a moron, kiddo," he could almost hear his father say. "Only morons believe that bullshit."

  So ... a Batman rescue was out. He had to be a "man" and face facts. He squeezed his eyes tight and tried to stop the trembling that had seized him, shaking him to his very bones. He was as helpless to stop it as he was to get out of the cage. He tried to think. A rescue by his father was almost as doubtful as one by Batman; his dad had a bad back that he was always complaining about. Tony's mother, though, said he just used it to get out of doing stuff around the house.

  These thoughts did nothing to calm him or reduce his tremors. He switched to trying to determine where he was, if not why he was there. He looked around. The cage he was in-or a jail more rightly-was in a dimly lit room that reminded him of the cellar in his house. In the middle of the large room there was a weird metal table whose surface was a thick screen with gutters under it that led to a large glass jar attached under the end of the table closest to the cage. The table was bolted to the floor on a thick metal pedestal. There were cabinets lining the wall to the right of the table, and to the left was a beat-up recliner with leather straps on its arms. Tony noticed there was some sort of symbol painted on the floor under it but couldn't tell what it was-it looked like part of a star and the arc of a circle around it. Along the left wall were countless shelves with books and jars and piles of papers stretching to the shadowy rear of the room where there were closed, overlapping double doors, like for an elevator on the left side of the rear wall, and a passageway that appeared to lead to another part of the basement on the right.

  Tony looked out the right side of his cage. Along the wall nearest him there was a large arch-shaped metal door set into the concrete. It looked like the door on the furnace in his cellar, only
much bigger. In front of it, with one end butting right up to the door, was another metal table, narrower than the other, and whose surface was rows of free-rolling metal wheels set on axles so that whatever was placed on the tabletop could roll easily ... Tight into the furnace?

  Tony shuddered. The room was empty but for him.

  I've been kidnapped.

  Tony was no genius, but at age eight he was smart enough to know that made no sense. His parents didn't have any money. Kidnappers couldn't expect much dough from his folks.

  They didn't kidnap you for the money, moron, his father admonished. Smarten up.

  If not for the money, then what? He had vague and scary ideas and wanted to face none of them. Luckily, the combination of shock, nausea, vomiting, and convulsive trembling combined to bring on a feeling of exhaustion that was irresistible. This shock-induced sleep saved him from having to face the bogeyman.

  For a while, at least.

  Steve Nailer and Debbie Watson entered the crematorium and stood outside the cage staring at the little boy whimpering in his sleep in the corner of the jail. Steve sniffed the air, and his lips stretched wide with a grin of pure happiness.

  Oh! The fear and innocence! The smell, the taste-so good-better than any sexual act she has ever consummated, and in her day, there were none she missed. Though it was hard work-harder than it should have been-she and Angel, with a little help from the Machine, had managed to get the boy into the house and down to the crematorium prison without anyone noticing.

  Now she pushes outward, probing, delighted at the wild recoiling of the boy from her merest psychic touch. But the little one's mind is no match for hers. She could bludgeon her way in and drive him deep into shock, never to recover, but no, that's not the road to pleasure and sustenance. Better to slip in under his radar, slowly wake him, and conjure up juicy images of what she is going to do to him once she gets him on the embalming table. That's the way to generate delicious panic and thirst-quenching fear.

  The boy in the cage woke with voices and terrifying images assaulting his mind. He opened his mouth to scream, but could only tremble, silently and uncontrollably. Outside the bars, Steve grabbed Debbie's hair and forced her to her knees in front of him. He didn't have to force very hard. While she serviced him, he watched the boy writhe with terror at the horror show playing in his head. By the time Steve was done with Debbie and they had carried little Tony Salmondello to the embalming table for the sacrifical carving, the boy was so insane with fear, he was no longer aware of what was happening to him.

  "Soon," Steve cooed to the boy as if he could hear him through the terror destroying his mind, "I'll have Little Jack Beanstalk here again, and this time he won't get away! "

  VI

  MEMORIAL DAY

  There was a crooked man ... who didn't know what to do.

  "What? Not again! What is his problem?"

  Jennifer retreated a step from her youngest brother's outburst. "I don't know, Steve. You know Jackie. He's always gone his own way. Him and his Gothic girlfriend are going to an outdoor concert on campus today. The last one of the year or something."

  "But it's a holiday! I thought we were going to have a cookout. Call him back. Make him come!" Steve demanded.

  Jen complied at once, without a word, but Jackie didn't answer his cell phone.

  "It's me again," Jen said after the message beep. "I command you to come to my cookout today. I command you, and your brother Steve commands you. You must obey!" She hung up and grinned at Steve, who gaped at her in disbelief.

  "Lighten up,"Jen said. "What can I do if he won't answer his phone?"

  "I can't believe this. How can she make light of this?" Steve fumed. "How long do I have to wait?"

  Jen looked at him curiously and offered, sheepishly, "If it's any consolation to you he said he would definitely show up for the Fourth of July cookout."

  "Yeah. Great," Steve mumbled.

  Later that morning, Steve was sitting at the kitchen table sharpening knives when Mrs. Holcromb came in to get some coffee from the pot kept brewing all day. He looked up, their eyes met, and Mrs. Holcromb almost let an involuntary shriek fly from her mouth. For a fleeting moment, sitting in shadow, Steve Nailer looked, to her, like the old woman who used to live in the house-the woman whose picture she'd seen on that fool TV show back at Halloween last year.

  Just a trick of the light, she told herself, but left the kitchen as quickly as possible.

  The old bitch saw me!

  Its not possible!Just like it should be impossible for the sister to make light of her commands.

  She sits motionless at the table after the old housekeeper, her fear as pungent as garlic in her wake, bustles out.

  How could she see me?

  It doesn't matter, she thinks, rising from the table. She won't see me again.

  Jeremy Watson was a man who liked cliches-he thought they spiced up his speech-but he never meant any of his favorites literally, until now. It was the strangest sensation, but since meeting the redhead at the barn, Jeremy actually felt as if he were walking on airwhenever he thought of her.

  Every day since their first meeting, he had gone to the barn at the same time, hoping she would show, but she hadn't. He could kick himself for having been so love-struck that he didn't find out anything about her-not where she lived, not her phone number. He didn't even get her name.

  What an idiot I am.

  He was waiting for her now, standing in the doorway to his studio, leaning against the frame, hopefully scanning the woods for some sign of her. He was startled when he turned and she was suddenly beside him. Smiling, she took his hand and led him into the barn.

  "Where'd that brother of yours go?" Mrs. Holcromb demanded ofJen as she bustled into the kitchen. She didn't wait for an answer. "He was here just a little while ago. Do you know what he did? He's got that crematorium locked up and I can't find the key. Why is that locked? I got gardening tools and stuff down there that I need!"

  Jen, sitting at the kitchen table, polishing silverware, shrugged defensively, but Debbie Watson stepped out of the pantry, shining an apple on her toomature breasts, and spoke up.

  "I saw him go into the barn with Jeremy a few minutes ago," she said, an odd smile on her face. Mrs. Holcromb gave her a stern-eyed stare then dismissed her to go find Steve. Debbie watched her go and bit into her apple, letting the juice run down her chin.

  It was a warm day, but Mrs. Holcromb always wore a coat sweater she had knitted herself-she had twentyseven of them. It was a hobby. She also had a closet full of forty-eight men's knitted sweaters of various styles she'd made for the late Mr. Holcromb-one for each year they were married. If ever there was a word to describe Mrs. Holcromb it would be brisk. It fit her to a tee. She did everything briskly. Thus it took her little time to cross the backyard, skirt the graveyard fence, and reach Jeremy's studio in the old barn.

  Being a tall woman, she could easily see through the new windows as she approached the barn. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.

  She let out a mangled sound of horror and disgust ... and looked closer.

  Jeremy Watson was in the throes of ecstasy. An earthquake could not have distracted him from the woman kneeling before him, so the reaction of Mrs. Holcromb outside the open studio window, though clear as a bell, had no chance of doing so. He rode the redhead's face and laughter bubbled up out of him, it just felt so good.

  Mrs. Holcromb was outraged and intent on rushing to the house to tell Jen what her husband was doing to her brother in the barn. So intent was she, she didn't see Debbie Watson step out from the corner of the barn until it was too late. By then, the pitchfork in Debbie's hands was already plunging into Mrs. Holcromb's chest. The old battle-ax came up short, a surprised look on her face, mouth agape, and let out a long, high-pitched moan. She looked down at the four rusty prongs sticking in her chest, then up at her assailant, a questioning expression on her pained face.

  Debbie thrust harder, pushing the large meta
llic tines deeper into Mrs. Holcromb's matronly bosom.

  Impaled, her heart wriggled to a stop. Her highpitched moan ended in a squeak, and she fell forward until the end of the pitchfork handle hit the ground. Her forward momentum stopped abruptly and she remained propped upright, like some macabre lawn ornament.

  Debbie stepped to one side, head cocked as she'd seen her brother often do when sizing up a work in creation, and admired her handiwork. It reminded her of one of her brother's sculptures. It seemed fitting to her that it should be erected right outside his studio window, sort of like a tribute to his genius, and on Memorial Day, no less-a day for honoring the dead. Too bad she had to dump it in the woods and couldn't leave it there for all to admire. As long as he saw itand she knew he had; he saw everything-she was happy.

  She touched herself, smiled, and took a step back. If she stood in just the right spot, she could see her new work of art, and beyond, look through the studio window to where her brother was being pleasured by Steve Nailer.

  Diane returned from grocery shopping for the holiday cookout and walked into Jen's house, her step light with love, not a care in the world until she saw the newspaper on the newly painted check-in counter Jeremy had built in the lobby.

  MISSING NORTHWOOD GIRL FOUND IN RIVER! And the subheading: ANOTHER MISSING IN DEERFIELD!

  She snatched the newspaper up and carried it down the corridor to the kitchen, reading the article as she went.

  Jeremy was sitting at the kitchen table pouring over a carpentry blueprint.

  "Cookout's canceled. Jackie isn't coming. Jen and Steve are bummed," he said, looking up. He saw what she was reading and had to comment. "How 'bout that, huh? Pretty weird. They say the mother didn't even know the girl was missing for something like two days. How could she not know? There's something fishy going on there. I bet the parents are guilty," he gossiped.

  "Oh my God!" Diane said suddenly.

  "What?"

  "Did you see where the little girl lived?"