The Asylum for Fairy-Tale Creatures (7 page)

“You are very naughty. What did you do?” cried Thumbeana and for the first time in her un-life she had real tears.

“Oh, I’m not hurt,” a tiny voice informed them. The air had gone cold and pure white breath came from Red.

There by the cells was a boy of six or seven. He wore a tidy school uniform and an honest face. He was also completely see-through.

“Bear, is that you?” Thumbeana asked, wiping her tears.

“Yes, silly. I was never a bear. They were right—I was a ghost thing hiding, but now I am free.”

Thumbeana thought about it for a moment and sulkily said, “Then I am happy for you.”

“Thank you, Thumbeana, and thank you, Red Riding Hood. Now you must run.” He pointed to a spiral staircase. “That way, because someone bad is coming.” Then, like smoke from a dead ember, he was lost to the air.

“Goodbye,” he said, becoming nothing.

To the staircase the pair went; downwards they went as fast as their bruised legs could carry them. Of course, if the ghost boy had had the time before moving on he would have clearly told his friends not to take the stairs downward. But he did not and they did.

Down and down into a thick darkness they ran. To the part of the asylum where even the insane feared to tread. There was a long corridor as was the design of the maze, however here there was only one cell at the very far end. The door to the cell had been obliterated and stood splintered in the doorway. Even in the gloom, Red Riding Hood could see that was not the way to proceed. No sooner had they begun to walk that long dark corridor than they both felt a crunching underfoot. Red Riding Hood reached down to feel her way and found it to be littered. There were thousands of them and all around. Bones: animal bones, bird bones, mice and ravens’ but as the two moved forward, crunch, crunch, crunch, they saw the bones of people.

“Where has all this come from?” Thumbeana voiced curiously.

“I think it is from the broken cell,” Red Riding Hood said. “I think we need to leave quickly.”

They would of course have done so, if not for the music that was suddenly filling the air, but more than that it filled their very beings, overwhelming their senses and rooting them to the spot.

The Pied Piper bowed in front of the two. He was horrible, thin and tall, like an insect dressed as a person. He danced and played his pipe, skipping this way and that, jumping as he played. Finally he pulled the pipe from his horrible lips.

“My, my. What do we have here? Two pretties eager for my rats?” His voice was venom.

Red and Thumbeana could only watch and listen as the piper played his hypnotic sound. Oh, what music played. It called the rats of all shapes and sizes crawling from holes in the brickwork or gnawing their way through the floor itself. Hundreds if not thousands appeared as the piper played. Rats of razor-sharp teeth and pestilent fur. They crawled over the piper and each other in time to the piper’s tune. Then he stopped playing and the rats reared in anticipation.

“You see, my pretties, my pets need feeding, and they are here to feast. Just like the children of Hamlet—oh, what a banquet they had.” With that he simply pointed a bony finger and the vermin poured forward in a wave of disease and pain. Chittering, they swept towards the two as again the piper played a feasting tune. When then and all of a sudden something much worse and vast descended from the ceiling. It moved exactly like wet shadow and as it took form the corridor lit up once again. The girl realised the terrible truththat the corridor was not in darkness, the thing was the darkness itself. Yet there was more to its smooth oily surface: bones white and brittle, trapped in place all around it like skeletons in tar. At first, when Red saw the piper she presumed he was the one who had caused the bones in some evil way. However this was not the case. She witnessed the rats drowning in the black with barely enough time to scream before being skinned to pure white bone that rattled against the stone floor.

The dark thing turned its attention to the piper, whose pipe had fallen to the floor from his terrified mouth. The piper could only gasp before the darkness took him. The bones followed the pipe to the stone with a clatter. Instantly Red and Thumbeana could move again; however, there was little point in doing so. There was no escape from the prisoner. A skull appeared amongst its surface, giving the oil a face of sorts as it flowed towards them. Red Riding Hood recognised the creature as would everyone who ever lived in the fairy tale kingdom. Many years ago it had been named Grandfather Death. Although never directly told about in stories, Grandfather Death was always there. When a princess was locked in a tower or a witch placed a child in a cooking pot, or a boy climbed a beanstalk like a fool, Grandfather Death would lurk in the cracks, waiting.

Thumbeana turned to Red. “Goodbye,” she said. “Leave safe, for me.” She smiled.

Before Red Riding Hood could question, Thumbeana threw her arms outstretched, walking into the darkness, and was instantly taken the same way as the others. Except this time Grandfather Death twisted and turned in an apparent silent agony. For Grandfather Death could only take life and Thumbeana was not life. She an un-child; born from death and as poison to the grandfather. It shook for a moment before shrivelling like a worm left in the midday sun. Bones rained from the dark in a clattering crescendo before nothing but a haze the texture of floating ember was left and Grandfather Death was gone.

Red fell to her knees at the loss of her friend. She felt herself collapsing inside as if her very soul were hurt. It would have been easy to lie there amongst the bone and die of too much heartache, if not for that moment her grandma’s words filling her head.

“Stick to the path, girl, and you will always be safe.”

She stood upright again and wiped the tears from her eyes.

“I will, Grandma,” she said. “I will.”

Red Riding Hood limped through the bowels of the asylum. Using the keys taken by her friends, she made her way through door after door. It was silent in this part of the asylum, for Grandfather Death had been quarantined as there was no greater madness than death itself. Eventually, unopposed, Red found her way to a set of small stairs that led upwards. She passed a girl on the stairs. The girl was tall, lank and terribly thin. Her bones were as if painted in skin and her straight jacket dripped from her. However even as her blond hair was wasting away by the clump and her crystal blue eyes sat in deep sockets; there was a memory of Beauty about her.  She muttered to herself with cracked lips and black teeth.  “Mustn’t sleep, mustn't sleep, sleep for a hundred years I must not, will not, sleep again.   

She slid along the stone wall with exhaustion dragging her down. Until finally she fell to the floor in a bony heap and slept the slumber that all living things must eventually surrender to. 

Slowly Red continued to climb for an unknown amount of time. Stopping to catch her breath and energy, she followed the cold stone beneath her feet. Until finally she came to another door and, fumbling for the right key, she unlocked it.

Light blinded her, but it was welcome to do so; fresh air bathed and soothed her. She held her hand to protect her eyes. When she adjusted she was in the courtyard of the asylum. The dark crumbling buildings stood like broken giants. Smoke rose from them in places in angry spiralling plumes into the blue sky where ravens circled. Windows were smashed and scattered. Iron bars ripped from the very stone and debris had been thrown to the gravel. The sounds of mania deep in the background of the asylum rose thicker than the smoke. Red limped past the dead and dying and the lost and the insane. No one stopped her. Anyone who had survived the night gave her no attention.

She saw a girl sitting on a tuffet, eating spiders with curds and whey. A naked man ran past screaming about his set of new clothes. The great black gate had been opened wide and all the asylum’s horses and all the asylum’s men had left, never to be seen again. Red simply stepped through to freedom, for whatever magic had previously parted the forest of thorns had not done so now. The carriages and horses along with any passenger and driver had gone to their doom. Broken and twisted, the corpse of carriage and flesh alike. They were held fast by thorns like broken baubles on a horrific Christmas tree. She walked to that wall of twisted tendrils of the evil vegetation and weeds stretching for miles and miles. There would be no way around it at all. It was then that the shadow crept over her and a chill tickled her spine. She turned to see the giant form of the wolf.

Previously Red Riding Hood had only seen the wolf in half-light. But now here under the clearest of days the wolf was the most terrible of all creatures. Its bristled fur, sharp as needles, was the black colour of nightmares and covered its entire huge, muscled form except in the patch to the right of its face, which was red and raw from their last meeting. One eye was hatred yellow and the other, amongst the damaged fur and flesh, was white as marble. As were the fangs that dripped slobber into the dirt.

“You,” sneered Red, her heart beating so hard in her chest, she could almost hear nothing else.

The wolf growled. “They took you away from me but I followed your scent. It was seared into my skin and I tore the asylum down to find you, little girl.”

Red Riding Hood held her ground in the huge beast’s shadow. She could smell its hot breath on the air and it huffed and puffed. Steam rose from its pitch-black fur.

“You think I fear you?” she said. “You took everything from me, including my sanity, with not even fear for comfort. You mean nothing, wolf, nothing.” Her words were pure contempt.

The wolf began stalking forward, its claws digging furrows into the ground.

“There is always more to take, little girl. There is always the bones.”

And the wolf remembered…

Into the forest so long ago under warmth of the trees, Grandma picked toadstools into her basket. The flowers were bright and birds were playful in the trees. The scrawny man approached, stumbling through the undergrowth. He wore rags and fell to his knees. When he opened his eyes the grandma’s kind face was peering back.

“Still, sir, still—you are exhausted.”

“Thank you, kind madam.”

The grandma saw the blood on the man’s rags.

“Are you hurt, sir?”

“No, madam, the blood is not mine. It was a wolf—a wolf attacked our village. I escaped but I was the only one,” he said, falling into exhaustion.

“My home is not too far and my granddaughter will be here soon. She will bring help.”

“All the better,” he murmured.

And back at the asylum the wolf lurched after the girl, jaws as wide as the gates of hell. The girl was quick and ran but this time not out of fear. Instead into the forest of thorns she went, leading the wolf as if he were the prey and the tiny girl in the blood-red hood were the hunter.

The thorns held no fear for the girl. She followed her grandma’s advice and her boots held to the path. She ducked and moved with the confidence of a child who made weekly trips to her grandma’s house in the woods. Not too rushed and with steady movements, she moved throughout the deadliest forest in the kingdom with barely a scratch. Yet the wolf, eager for blood, ploughed into the thorns, tearing and snarling at the girl. Snapping those jaws and roaring in rage. The girl went on ignoring the chaos bearing down upon her. She was home again, running through the forest on to Grandma’s with a basket full of good things. There was no asylum, no wolf, just the forest, warm and friendly, the smell of pine filling her lungs. She was almost skipping when her breath failed and she came to exhaustion, unable to run any more. Her arms were a criss-cross of thorn scratches and a sliver of blood ran down her cheek, her red hood shredded.

But what of the wolf? Eventually, retracing her steps, she found the beast. Or what was left of it. The wolf had gone and the man remained, bleeding and caught in the thorns. He hung there, pierced and stuck like a roast hog, unable to move, unable to cry for help, a sad, sad thing that deserved no pity. His eye looked at Red Riding Hood again for one last time before he died. She felt nothing.

Mostly Contented Ever AfterThere once was a young girl who visited her grandma in the woods. But when she arrived, she found her grandma had been murdered by a wolf that could talk like a man. When she returned to her village they blamed her and thought the story of the wolf was the product of madness. So she was sent to the asylum. The girl was horribly treated but with the help of her friends she survived and was able to defeat the wolf that had haunted her. Eventually after a long journey she made her way back to her grandma’s house where she lived in the woods for the rest of her days.

Maybe not happily, but mostly contented ever after.

The End

THE GRUESOME ADVENTURES OF ALICE IN UNDEADLAND

Chapter One

For most of her short life Alice had lived in an orphanage after her parents had succumbed to cholera. It was an unhappy place run by a cruel and crone-like mistress who wore ill-fitting black lace over old pale skin the colour of tripe. Her wrinkled face was coated in a thick powder and globs of red lipstick. She closely resembled an undernourished vampire... The mistress would dream up unusual and impossible chores for the children to undertake. Her favourite was having the orphans knit spider webs into scarves.

The trick was to catch the spiders first, a task not suited to children. The spiders were vicious and as Alice and the other orphans entered the dust-covered arachnid room the spiders would descend, biting, pinching, crawling in the girls’ hair, ears, under their rags and over their skin.

“Help me, Alice,” screeched Dinah, one of the smallest and youngest orphans, who Alice shared a close bond with. Being barely six years old, Dinah found life particularly hard in the orphanage and Alice had helped her through the trials of being there.

Alice shielded Dinah under her arms and sat her down. Around them other girls were in floods of tears and panic.

“Don’t fret, Dinah.” Alice smiled and held her hand; a fat, juicy spider climbed over tiny fingers trailing webs and spots of blood where the spider bit.