A Tale Dark & Grimm

by Adam Gidwitz

  “Look fun?” said one of Hansel’s two demon guides. Then he led Hansel between the pits of fire, over a path that glowed like embers. The soles of Hansel’s feet began to scorch, and he hopped from foot to foot and winced. But far worse than the pain in his feet was the chorus of screaming sinners bursting forth from the pits and then being shoved back down again, like hellish jack-in-the-boxes.

  As they passed one crater, a heavyset woman burst from beneath the bubbling fire and screamed, “Oh pretty please, stop!” Hansel stared at her. It was the baker woman. She saw him, too. “Hansel!” she cried. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Tell them to stop! Please tell them to stop! Please! Pretty please!” A demon with a pitchfork shoved her back under the surface of the boiling fire.

  Hansel slowed beside the pit. He hated the baker woman. She was bad. He was glad she was being punished for what she’d done—to them and to all the children she must have eaten before they met her. Yes, he thought as he watched her bob to the surface again, scream, and then plunge back into the torture below. Yes, punish her.

  But when she came up again he saw the fear in her face, and the remorse, and the pleading. She deserved to be punished. But not like this. And not for eternity.

  “Would you please stop?” Hansel said.

  The demon with the pitchfork turned to Hansel. “What?” he hissed.

  Hansel swallowed hard. He held his head high. He stared straight into the demon’s eyes. “Please,” he said. “I’ve forgiven her. Stop punishing her now.”

  For a moment, the demon looked paralyzed. Then he glanced at Hansel’s demon guides. The corners of his mouth broke into a smile. And he said, “Nice try, kid. But it doesn’t work like that.”

  The two demons laughed and pushed Hansel on. His eyes scanned the pits, looking for the empty one that he knew, somewhere, awaited him. Up ahead, he noticed someone in one of the pits who, for some reason, caught his attention. It was a young man with black hair and striking green eyes. He wailed and howled each time his face rose above the boiling pit. Hansel looked away.

  Finally, they arrived at an empty one. Hansel stood at the edge, looking down into the boiling fire, rimmed with black jagged rock.

  Have you ever stood at the edge of water and known that it was going to be really, really cold? And you knew you had to go in, but you really, really, really didn’t want to?

  Well, this was kind of like that.

  But with liquid fire instead.

  Hansel clenched his lips and clasped his sweaty hands together. He closed his eyes. Behind him, he heard the demons chuckling. And then, before they could push him or kick him or strike him with the pitchfork, Hansel jumped in.

  Pain. Greater pain than he could ever have imagined. Burning so terrible and unnatural that every inch of Hansel’s body screamed to get out of the fire. He began to kick frantically, struggling to get to the surface. Finally he rose above the flames, and there was a split second of relief, as if perhaps the pain was coming to an end. But instantly he felt the sting of pitchforks on his neck and his face, thrusting him back under. He went down again and burned and burned, and the burn was worse this time for having felt, just for an instant, the sweet, cooling relief of the surface. Once more Hansel struggled up and clear of the flames.

  He was just about to loose the most lung-cracking scream he had ever produced when he heard one of the demons say, “Give him a minute this time. I like to hear them scream.”

  Just as the sound pushed past Hansel’s throat and over his tongue, he clamped his lips shut. He looked into the demon’s narrow, stupid, vicious eyes. And he thought, For you, I won’t.

  After a moment of the sweetest relief imaginable, they pushed him under again, and he was certain his skin was burning off. He kicked up to the surface. The demons looked at him expectantly. But instead of screaming, Hansel concentrated on the howls of the other sufferers.

  “I’m sorry!”

  “I hate myself for what I did!”

  “If only I had been good!”

  “Why isn’t this one screaming?” the demon said as they shoved him back under the liquid fire.

  While he was under again, he realized that, while this was terrible, it wasn’t as terrible as all those sleepless nights when he had felt so guilty about abandoning Gretel. At least this was just pain, and not shame and guilt. This was not his fault. He rose to the surface again, and he smiled at the demons.

  “This one’s defective!” the demon shrieked. And they pushed him back under.

  Down and back up, and Hansel smiled. Down and back up, and Hansel smiled. Down and back up, and the demons were pulling him out of the pit.

  “What’s wrong with this one?” one of them said, and poked him with his pitchfork. Hansel winced but did not make a sound.

  “Better take him to the Devil himself,” the other demon said. “See what’s to be done.”

  So they took him down another burning path. Hansel’s brief sense of triumph was swallowed like a coin slipping into the great dark maw of a well. The Devil himself.

  Soon they came to a place where the pits of fire ended, and there began what looked like a quiet, residential neighborhood. They turned on to a wide street, with grass and trees and bushes—but red grass and black trees and red bushes—until they came to a little house with a black picket fence and red walls and black shutters. The demons pushed Hansel to the door. “Go see him,” they said. “See if you don’t scream then.”

  They turned away. “I hope we get a screamer next time,” one said.

  “Yeah,” said the other. “That was freaky.”

  Hansel stood before the door. It was black, like the Gates of Hell, but it was quaint, too, with a knocker that looked like the bronzed head of a kitten. Hansel looked at the knocker more closely. The whiskers were real. It was the bronzed head of a kitten.

  Avoiding the knocker, Hansel rapped very quietly on the door. No one answered. Cautiously, he leaned his head against it and listened.

  Screams—terrible screams, much worse even than those of the sinners in the pits of fire—echoed from inside. Hansel’s blood shivered in his veins. “Do it,” he told himself. “Do it now.” He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.

  Hansel found himself in a living room—sort of like a normal living room. It had a couch before a fire, a wingback armchair, side tables, candles to read by, and a thick rug. But it stank—of sweat and body odor and sulfur all mixed together—it stank so much that Hansel nearly gagged, and was forced to hold his nose and cover his mouth. He looked more closely at the wingback chair. It wasn’t leather. It was human skin. Hansel could see teeth sticking out from one of the seams. He clamped his hand over his mouth more tightly to prevent himself from throwing up.

  The screams were coming from the adjoining room. Carefully, Hansel crept up to the edge of the couch. It was made of hair. Human hair. He tried not to think about it. Hidden behind the couch, he could see into the next room. It was the kitchen. In it he saw an old Devil-woman, with a pot and a pan in each hand, cooking and singing. Not screaming. That noise was singing.

  Just then, Hansel heard the creaking sound of footsteps on the stairs that led up to the front door. He looked around frantically for a place to hide. His eyes fell on a closet. He ran to it and slipped inside, closing the door quietly behind him. Just then, he heard the Devil’s voice.

  “Grandmother, I’m home!”

  The screaming-singing in the kitchen stopped. “Dinner’s ready, my dear.” And now Hansel could hear the sound of a table being set.

  The Devil helped set the table (for even the Devil helps his grandmother set the table). He stopped and sniffed the air. “Do I smell human flesh?” he asked.

  Hansel caught his breath.

  “Of course, silly,” his grandmother said. “There’s a little boy named Hansel, waiting for you in the closet in the living room.”

  No, she didn’t say that. I was just teasing you.

  “Of course, silly,” his grandmother ac
tually said. “What do you think we’re having for dinner?” And they sat down and ate.

  Hansel sat in the dark of the closet—surrounded by extra blankets and pillows (he refused to look at what they were made of)—and waited. The Devil ate the supper that his grandmother had made for him—the fingers of sinners, spiced with their guilty tears—and then he yawned loudly.

  “Tired from all your wicked trickery?” his grandmother said indulgently. “Come and lie down. You can put your head in my lap, and I’ll stroke your beautiful golden hair.”

  The Devil removed his long traveling coat, took off his spectacles and laid them on a side table, and curled up on the rug in the center of the living room, laying his head in his grandmother’s lap. She gently stroked his hair. “Sleep now,” she said. “Sleep.” Soon he was snoring. After a little while, the grandmother was, too.

  Hansel sat there in the dark closet, listening to them snore. Suddenly, he realized this was his chance. Hadn’t the old man said that it only required three golden hairs from the Devil’s head to escape this place? Carefully, he opened the door of the closet and tiptoed over to where the Devil was sleeping. Ever so gingerly, Hansel reached out and took ...

  A golden hair from the Devil’s head.

  That’s what he’s going to take, right?

  Right?

  Wrong! Are you crazy? The Devil would wake up immediately! And then it would be all over for Hansel, forever and ever and ever.

  I hope that’s not what you thought Hansel was going to do. If you did, good luck if you ever end up in Hell.

  Hansel reached out and took the Devil’s spectacles from the side table, retreated with them to the closet, and closed the door again. Then he waited there all night.

  The next morning, the Devil arose and readied himself for another day of soul-collecting. His grandmother made him a breakfast of human fingernails—scrambled, of course—and packed up his lunch in a bag.

  But before he left, the Devil announced that he could not find his glasses. He was furious, for he could barely see without them. “I hardly recognize you, Grandmother!” he shouted. “Where in Hell did I put them?”

  “Devil knows!” his grandmother said.

  “No, he doesn’t!” he shouted. Eventually he stormed out of the house without his glasses, grumbling about telling one sinner from another and wasting a perfectly good day of damnation.

  After he was gone, the grandmother went upstairs. Hansel ever so carefully opened the door to the closet. He peered up the stairs. The grandmother was carrying things to the attic. Hansel watched her carry an armload of objects up the stairs—including a crown with a head still attached to it, and something that looked like a squid—and come back down empty-handed. She did it again—this time carrying two giant feet. When she came back down, she was sweating from the heat and strain. She itched her gray hair and then took it off. Hansel grimaced at the scabby, bald head underneath. She disappeared into a room and reemerged without her hair at all, carrying instead a taxidermied child with a lollipop in his nose. As she turned for the attic, Hansel took a deep breath, and he followed her up.

  Each of his steps on the stairs made a loud creak, causing him to wince and suck in his breath. But the Devil’s grandmother was “singing” again, and she couldn’t hear a thing. When she disappeared through the door of the attic, Hansel hurried up after her. She was half buried in boxes and strange objects when he quietly shut the door behind her. To his amazement, relief, and glee, there was a key in the attic door. He turned it in the lock and went back downstairs.

  Hansel soon heard frantic banging on the attic door. Then the grandmother began shouting for help. But no one was around to hear. After a lot of banging and shouting, the grandmother seemed to resign herself to a day in the attic, and she quieted down.

  Now Hansel made his way into her bedroom. On the dresser before an obsidian mirror stood a wig stand, with the grandmother’s gray wig on it. Around it was her makeup—thick black lipstick that looked like a petrified oil slick and blush that looked like dried, powdered blood and fake eyelashes that looked like—no, were—the legs of flies. In the closet were her dresses.

  Hansel closed the door to her room.

  He came out an hour later, dressed from head to foot like the Devil’s grandmother. He wore a billowing black dress, makeup all over his face (he had put it on as best he could, which wasn’t very well), and her gray wig. He’d skipped the eyelashes.

  In the kitchen, Hansel took what looked to be a pot of human fingers out of the icebox. He put the pot on the stove and turned on the heat. “Leftovers,” he said to himself. Then he set the table with forks and knives made of human bone and teeth, and he waited for the Devil to get home.

  When he heard the Devil’s footsteps trudging up to the door, Hansel began to scream at the top of his lungs. The door opened and the Devil came in.

  “Damn it, Grandmother! Can you stop your infernal singing for one bloody instant?”

  “Someone’s in a bad mood today,” Hansel said in his best grandmother voice.

  “Without my blasted glasses, there isn’t any point looking for sinners. I made a complete fool of myself,” the Devil said sullenly.

  “Oh, I’m sure you didn’t, dear,” Hansel said. And he began to ladle the fingers onto the Devil’s plate.

  “Your voice sounds strange today, Grandmother,” the Devil said. “Are you well?”

  A cold sweat broke out all over Hansel’s skin. “Of course, dear,” he said. “Just a little sniffle.” And he sniffled twice.

  The Devil sat down at the table but immediately turned on Hansel. “I tell you, it stinks of human flesh in here! It’s disgusting!”

  But Hansel remembered what the grandmother had said the day before. “Of course it does! What do you think we’re having for dinner?”

  The Devil took one bite of his dinner and spit it out. “This is revolting. What is it?”

  “Leftovers,” Hansel said nervously.

  “Ugh! I hate leftovers!” The Devil stood up and stomped into the living room and plopped down on the couch. “What a horrible day!” he shouted.

  Hansel took a deep breath, and then slowly walked into the living room. “Here, dear,” he said. “Let me stroke your hair. Everything will be better in the morning.” And Hansel sat down in the middle of the living-room rug, just as the Devil’s grandmother had done.

  The Devil grumbled and laid his head in Hansel’s lap. “Grandmother, why are you shaking?” he said.

  “The better to rock you to sleep, my dear,” Hansel said, and he tried to prevent his teeth from chattering, too.

  “Grandmother, will you sing to me?” the Devil asked, his eyelids fluttering closed.

  “Certainly, my dear,” Hansel said. He swallowed hard. And then he began to scream at the very top of his lungs.

  “Grandmother, what a beautiful voice you have,” the Devil said.

  “The better to sing you to sleep, my dear,” Hansel replied.

  “Can you stroke my hair?” the Devil said.

  With trembling hands, Hansel began to stroke his hair.

  “Grandmother, what delicate fingers you have,” the Devil said.

  “Shhhh,” Hansel whispered. “Sleep, my dear.”

  And the Devil slept.

  As soon as the Devil’s breathing was nice and even, Hansel took one of the Devil’s golden hairs between two of his fingers and, trying not to wake him, plucked it out.

  “Tar and pitch!” screamed the Devil, sitting up. “Why did you do that?”

  Hansel’s heart had jumped into his mouth. But he said, as calmly as he could, “I’m sorry! I fell asleep and had a bad dream. I must have grabbed hold of your hair.”

  The Devil settled himself back in Hansel’s lap. “I love bad dreams,” he said. “What was it?”

  Hansel swallowed. “I dreamed that there was a city with a fountain of wine, but that it flowed no longer, and all of the people were sad.”

  “Aha! Those old fo
ols!” said the Devil. “I placed a frog right under the fountain. That’s what’s stopping up all the wine! All they’ve got to do is kill it. But they don’t know that, of course.” He chuckled at the unhappiness he had caused and fell back to sleep.

  As soon as the Devil’s breathing was nice and even again, Hansel took another golden hair between his fingers and plucked it out.

  “Sulfur and brimstone!” screamed the Devil, sitting up. “Why did you do that?”

  “I’m sorry!” Hansel said. “I fell asleep and had a bad dream again. I must have grabbed hold of your hair.”

  The Devil settled himself back in Hansel’s lap. “Well,” he said, “what was it this time?”

  “This time I dreamed there was a city with a tree that gave golden apples. But the tree was dying, and it would give apples no more, and all of the people were sad.”

  “Aha! Those old fools!” said the Devil. “I placed a mouse under the ground at the root of the tree. It’s nibbling at the roots and killing it. If they just took the mouse out and did away with it, the tree would produce golden apples again. But they don’t know that, of course.” He chuckled at all the misery he had caused and closed his eyes again.

  Again, Hansel waited until the Devil’s breathing was nice and even, and a third time he plucked out a golden hair.

  “Father above and Me below!” screamed the Devil, sitting up. “Don’t tell me! You had another bad dream!”

  “Yes!” Hansel said. “I’m so sorry!”

  The Devil settled himself back in Hansel’s lap. “I’m getting sick of this,” he said. “Tell me the dream, but if you pull my hair again, I’ll put you out there with the sinners.”

  “I dreamed there was a poor ferryman,” Hansel said, “who had been in his boat for seven years, and couldn’t leave, no matter how hard he tried.”