The Grimm Chronicles, Vol.1 (11 page)

Darkness. Pitch-blackness and all the terrible feelings that come with it. I fumbled for a light switch, found one on the wall, and two little light bulbs switched on at the bottom of the stairs. A smell caught me, but I had no idea what it was. It smelled rank, like spoiled meat. It made my eyes water.

“Darling!” came Edward’s voice from the kitchen. “Please! I’ve waited so, so long for this!”

I ran down the stairs, spun my heels in the dirt floor, and then stopped. The door was there on the other end of the large room, but it was blocked.

By bones. Thousands and thousands of bones, piled high and strewn everywhere.

I screamed.

Chapter 8

They were everywhere. Skulls, femurs, hip bones, rib cages. Some were ivory white; others had chunks of rotting meat still clinging to them. They filled the entire basement, piled up against the basement door, and even filled a large hole that had been dug in one corner next to a dusty red rototiller and an old yellow matching washer and drier set. It was one mass grave that just so happened to also be the place where Edward did his laundry.

And there she was: the girl from my dream. She was lying against one of the concrete walls, right under two old shelves lined with empty glass jars and dirt-encrusted gardening tools. She looked just as she had in my dream, her skin clinging to her bones, nothing left inside.

The basement door opened. I stepped back, closer to the giant hole, and as my eyes adjusted to the shadows an entirely new horror hit me.

“Ah,” Edward said when he reached the last step. “Of course. The rack. I save that for special occasions. It’s old, by the way. I brought it over from Europe more than … what … seventy years ago? Wow, time really flies.”

“Who?” I asked, unable to look away. The skeleton was still intact, mostly, its arms spread out and tied at the top of the T-shaped wooden monstrosity. The head hung in shame, some of its long strands of hair still sticking out of the rotten skull.

“A young woman,” he said darkly. “Like all of the others. Only this one … she was a thorn in my side. She tried to kill me. But she failed. And I brought her here and I made her suffer. This was a long time ago, though.”

“Seventy years …”

Edward’s hand rested on my shoulder. I flinched and he laughed. “I’ve been around a long time. But I swear, I’m
not
a vampire. That
is
what all the kids talk about these days, no?”

“You’re one of the Corrupted. Prince Charming.” I felt his hand squeeze my shoulder tighter.

“That,” he whispered, “is something you shouldn’t know.” I felt his hot breath on my neck. I felt frozen. Every inch of my body screamed at me to run, but I couldn’t. “I wasn’t always like this. It’s just a taste I acquired.”

“Her name was Juliette,” I said, staring at the tortured skeleton. “She was a hero.”

The hand gripped my shoulder tighter. “And here I thought you were just another virgin. No matter—hero juices are the tastiest of all.”

Something kicked in. Call it instinct or call it the hero’s reflexes or whatever, but the moment he finished that last sentence, my hand clenched into a fist and I brought it across my body, connecting right with his stomach. He doubled over with a grunt and I bolted for the staircase.

“You can’t run!” he called out, laughing and coughing.

I reached the top and opened the door, making my way to the other side of the mansion, up the stairs, past his bedroom. What else was here? There had to be something. Something. I checked each of the other doors. There was a bathroom, plain and simple. There were other rooms, but all of them were empty. I ran to one of the windows, expecting it to open. It was locked. It was more than locked—the glass looked thick and unbreakable.

Of course. After decades of doing this and accumulating all those skeletons in the basemen, he’d perfected what he was doing.

I had to fight.

I bent down and used the pen to draw a foil on the hardwood floor. Blade. Handle. Bellguard. When I finished, I pulled it out of the floor.

“So predictable.”

I spun around, wielding the foil. There was a crash of metal on metal. The room was dark but I could clearly see my blade pressed against Edward’s blade.

“Did you not think I would have a spare sword lying around this dusty old mansion?” he asked, smiling. His face looked older, as if layers and layers of makeup had been wiped away. Now, his skin looked dark and gray, his eyes sunken, sucking in the moonlight streaming in through the windows.

“You’re about to find I’m full of surprises,” I said, swinging at him. Our blades clanged together. I sidestepped just like I’d seen him do and we danced around the empty room. The sound of steel-on-steel echoed.

“You don’t even know your powers,” Edward said, parrying my blows. “You drew a foil?” He parried my blow and stepped forward, sending a shower of sparks as our blades grinded together. He held his blade against me. His face was only inches from mine and I could see how dead and decayed his skin had become. “Look at me,” he whispered. “I need to feed.”

I pushed him back, stabbing again and again. He parried, laughing.

“Maybe this isn’t working out,” Edward said. “Maybe Tricia would be more willing.”

I swung harder and stabbed faster, faster than I ever had before. Edward parried what he could and ducked out of the way when I got too close. I could feel my breaths quickening and began to slow. The moment he saw his opening, he lunged forward, pressing blade tightly against mine and closing the distance between us yet again.

I tried to pull away but he held our blades together. “Look at my sword,” he said. “It’s a saber. Not a foil. The blade is stronger. If you knew how to draw a saber, you could pose a challenge. You’re a good swordswoman. But you can’t win.”

“You’re right!” I said, stepping down on his foot with my heel. He cried out and fell back, pulling my foil with him as he went. Disarmed, I turned and bolted for the door.

“Alice!” he called out, laughing. “You forgot your weapon!”

I ran downstairs into the statue room. It was darker down here, save for a single lamp from the art room shining through the doorway. Think, Alice … think! You’re the hero! You’re not getting out of this if you don’t
think
! He killed Juliette because she didn’t have the pen. She left it for me. She sacrificed herself to make sure I was prepared.

And Edward had tortured her before he killed her. Maybe she wanted me to see that. Maybe she wanted me to see what Prince Charming was really capable of.

“Over a
hundred
years of this!” Edward’s voice called out from the library. “And you know what? I have no idea who gave me the nickname ‘Prince Charming.’ I was just the son of a king and nothing more! I didn’t pretend to be charming in the slightest! It wasn’t until word about Snow White spread around the world that people began embellishing the original blasted story.”

I ran across the room, staring up at one of three giant angel statues. Its feathery wings spread out a good five feet wide. Where had he found this? Had he stolen it? Brought it over from Europe?

“I love angels,” Edward had told me the first time I came over. “I love the way they represent something we never see. I love their long, slender wings.”

Suddenly I had a plan. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pen, setting it in front of the statue.

“I woke Snow White,” Edward called out. He was closer now, making his way toward the statue room. I could hear the heels of his shoes on the floor. “I woke her up and we lived together and then we had no idea what to do. We argued. I hit her and she ran away. She ran away! Soon after, I developed a hunger. I couldn’t satisfy it unless I was tearing into the flesh of my victims. God, I loved the virgins. They just tasted so much sweeter.”

I got behind the statue, pressing my back against the back of the statue. I planted my feet against the wall, my knees scrunched up against my body. It was tight. I climbed toward the top of the statue slowly, alternating my shoulders and pressing my feet tight so they walked me up the wall. My sweaty hands slipped on the marble and I nearly fell, but my feet pressed firmly against the wall and my butt muscles kept me in place.

“Alice?” Edward called out. I stopped. He was in the room now. My heart began racing.

“You dropped your pen,” he said. “Or did you mean to do that on purpose? Is this you giving up? Alice, Alice, Alice.” I heard him bend over, picking up the pen. “You can’t quit. That’s not how this works.”

Now! With all my strength, I pushed my feet hard against the wall.

“It feels warm … I—No!”

The statue fell off its concrete base. I fell with it, turning and spinning as the statue crashed on the floor. My shoulder hit the hardwood floor and I rolled, immediately climbing to my feet.

“Damn you!” Edward screamed desperately.

I spun around. There he was, still on the ground, one of the angel’s wings pinning both his legs. The angel had crashed partway through the floor, sending wood splinters jutting upward in every direction.

I ran forward, grabbing the pen from where Edward had dropped it. He looked up at me, cursing. In the darkness it was hard to see his legs underneath the statue, but they didn’t look good. Still, he was struggling, slowly moving the massive statue.

“Alice,” he said, looking up. For a moment, his eyes returned to those beautiful eyes I’d fallen for in school. Then the color faded, and his dark eyebrows scrunched together in a devilish frown.

“This is for Juliette!” I shouted, stabbing the pen into his neck. He cried out. I stabbed him again. No blood escaped the wounds. The holes grew larger, his skin burning away. Pretty soon, I was stabbing at the air, still crying out.

Nothing remained but a pile of ash.

Chapter 9

“So you said ‘This is for Juliette’ and then you stabbed him?” Briar asked. He strode ahead of me with ease, spinning around to watch me slip between two tall maple trees. We were alone in the forest behind my house, dancing around the underbrush in a mad game of “tag.”

“Yup. What do you think?” I asked, reaching out for him. He hopped away. The sun was out. I’d begun sweating underneath my indigo ruffled t-shirt and I could feel my makeup beginning to cake on my face. Stuff I was going to have to get used to, I thought grimly.

“It’s a bit clichéd,” the rabbit admitted. “And yet, I’m glad he heard it.”

I took a deep breath, running my hand across the rough bark of a maple. “It wasn’t easy. I sat there in the mansion for a long time, just thinking.”

“The young man you cared about,” Briar said sadly, “was not all he seemed. I wish I could tell you it was an isolated incident, but having been around for so, so long …”

I smiled. “The whole innards-sucking thing is making it easier to get over him, I think.”

“I’m glad you’re all right.”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

Briar hopped atop an old pine tree that had fallen over. His whiskers twitched.

“I thought you said you believed in me!” I reached out to touch his fur but he jumped away again.

“Come on now,” he said, kicking up old leaves in my direction. I swallowed a breath and pushed off, trying to maneuver my way around a crop of tall pines to cut him off. But he was too quick and nimble—I could see why Br’er Fox never caught him. “The hero must be in tip-top shape!” he said. “Tip-top! Acrobatic! Knowledgeable! You can’t create what you don’t understand, after all. And you can’t fight if you can’t catch your breath.”

I stopped and bent over, sucking in fresh oxygen. OK, I was downright
panting
. My body wasn’t quite ready to be a full-fledged hero just yet. “I won’t be the last hero either, will I?”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But right now, we have more important things to think about.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Briar licked his paw and smoothed out the white fur around his mouth. “Like who we should hunt down next, of course.”

Then he said to his councilors, "I will marry my daughter, for she is the image of my deceased wife, and nowhere else can I find a bride who is her equal."
[vi]

July 25, 1934

A strange man arrived today on horse and buggy. He was wearing a beautiful gray suit, and dapped at the sweat on his forehead with a white embroidered handkerchief.

I knew immediately that he was a Corrupted, but did not play my hand. There were far too many people walking down Main Street for me to attempt a quick kill. The people were mostly lined up outside of the post office on the eastern edge of town, a small red-bricked building that had been converted into a soup kitchen for the unemployed. Every day, people are lined up outside the front door to wait for a loaf of bread and a bowl of watery soup.

Everyone in town is hungry, it seems. Some people claim the Great Depression is coming to a close, but the suffering continues. My uncle has so far managed to keep his job at the butcher’s store but so many others have been unlucky that it feels like a strange darkness has passed through the town. The nights are cold and long, as if the sun refuses to wake each morning. It’s supposed to be the opposite. Summer days are supposed to be longer.

Maybe the days just feel short.

Br’er Rabbit tells me this man is a dwarf, one of the dwarfs from the story of Snow-White. He certainly was short enough to be one.

July 27, 1934

Three more of the dwarfs have arrived, each on their own horse and buggy. This is strange … our town has cars and modern conveniences like electricity. Although nowadays no-one uses electricity because it’s cheaper to light a candle, and many cannot afford gasoline so they have taken to hitching their horses to their cars. Still, even now with so much suffering, buggies are rare.

The town is located only twenty miles west of the great city of Chicago. Each of the dwarfs has arrived during the day, when the bread line is long, which I suspect is intentional. They know the hero is here, or at least suspect it.

“Business,” Br’er told me. He snickered and added, “That, or there’s a gold mine nearby no one knows about.” He’s a strange rabbit and I must admit I don’t enjoy his jokes very much. But he’s knowledgeable with the Corrupted and if he truly believes that the dwarfs are here on business, I’m inclined to agree with him.

But what business? That … I do not know. And it will take time to find out.

For there are worse things befouling this town.

July 30, 1934

I’ve been in this town for nearly six months, following a trail that has since gone cold. There is a creature nearby that was once a princess. She is hiding from a man who was once a king, and in their story he was her father. Her father! He’d attempted to marry his own daughter because she reminded him of his dead wife.

I saw the king, just once. He was in Gerald’s General Store, the last store on the very end of Main Street, purchasing provisions for a hunt. He is a tall man with a thick gray mustache and dark, beady eyes. He wears a brown suit and keeps a canteen hooked to his belt. He looks much like the pictures of Teddy Roosevelt, before he became president. The king has a big hunting rifle, too, slung over his shoulder. The sight of it clearly intimidated poor old Gerald, who kept one eye on the man as he counted out change for the twenty-dollar bill.

There are a thousand people in this town worth less than twenty dollars.

The king had purchased a significant quantity of canned soup and camping provisions, and Gerald had no bags left. So I walked up to the king and—in my kindest voice—asked him if he would like help carrying his items to his car. He looked me over, then gave a sour nod.

I took the camping provisions out to his car, a new Ford whose exterior had already collected a fair amount of dirt from the rough country roads. Many of the cars in town were sitting collecting dust along the street, waiting to be used again. No doubt this king would become the best friend of Harold Berge, the owner of the gas station.

But this man had a full tank of gas, I noticed. I asked him pleasantly to where he was traveling.

“None of your business,” he said briskly, snatching the box of matches from my grip. He handed me a nickel. “Be on your way now, young lady.”

I stepped away from the car, watching him head south.

August 5, 1934

The dwarfs have set up shop in an old storefront that was once a bank. A year before I arrived in town, the bank was flooded with people demanding their money back. The bank’s owner explained that he didn’t have all of their money—he’d loaned it out to business and farmers, and so he couldn’t pay them all. The bank was shut down and the people unlucky enough to have money there found themselves on the breadline.

Now the dwarfs are starting a new bank, and they’ve hired a dozen able-bodied men to begin rebuilding it. Already, two trucks full of lumber and marble are parked outside. Briar has promised he will keep an eye on the dwarfs, and will also try to find out where they have come from in hopes of learning more about them. I’m indebted to his painstaking research. It has served me well.

But I still don’t fully understand his jokes.

I had a nightmare this past night. The princess … she stalks men in the night. Already there have been deaths, and each night I follow her in the darkness as she searches for her next prey.

August 7, 1934

My aunt and uncle have taken great care of me, but I cannot abide by their rules if I am to find the princess and her hunter. My uncle expects me in bed by nine o’clock every night. My aunt expects me to help with housework each day. My uncle doesn’t allow my aunt to work, nor would she be able to find a job anywhere in town if she could. But that hasn’t stopped other women from marching on occasion demanding the businesses still open consider women for jobs as well. My aunt speaks from time to time about women’s suffrage, and the law in 1919 that gave women the right to vote right alongside men. When she tells me about it in private, she sounds proud. When she mentions it in front of my uncle—on accident, always—she sounds sad.

I will need a job at some point, if I am to continue hunting Corrupted. Briar tells me about the previous heroes from time to time, but I don’t wish to know too much. There have been many. None have lived for very long.

August 8, 1934

The trail is warm again. Another nightmare …

August 12, 1934

I am back in my bedroom, or rather the guestroom in my uncle’s house. I am “grounded,” for lack of a better word, although one can hardly “ground” a 19-year-old girl. No, scratch that. I’m no girl. I am a woman. I even have a gentleman suitor named Richard who has managed to win my uncle’s affection by lavishing him with fancy cigars from Spain.

Apparently, my uncle is very easy to buy.

I, on the other hand, am not quite so excited about Richard. He’s a year younger than me for starters, and has decided that he will attend college in Chicago. He would like to arrange to marry me before then so that I may accompany him. What else? Oh, of course: he already has a home picked out on the south side of the massive city, right near Lake Michigan. His parents are heavily invested in oil speculation out west and give him everything he may need.

He told all of this, of course, to my uncle. Not to me. Although I was sitting on the couch beside my uncle during the entire conversation. I’d been wearing a floral-pattern dress with a small pocket sewn near the waist so I could carry the magical fountain pen at all times. Richard wore a blue suit coat with shoulder pads that dwarfed his shoulders. His sandy blond hair was combed back and held in place with a shiny gel. He has a strange brown mole on one cheek and I couldn’t stop staring at it as he talked. He seemed not to notice.

When the conversation was over, my uncle shook Richard’s hand and they made plans to speak again to “hammer out the details” of the wedding. When Richard was gone, my uncle smiled and asked me what I thought.

“I think he and you will make a fine couple,” I answered.

And now here I sit, allowed to leave my room only to use the restroom and to eat. I’ve buried myself in my worn copy of
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
and taken to talking more with Briar when he’s not off searching for clues about the mysterious dwarfs and their new bank. He keeps his jokes to a minimum.

August 15, 1934

A murder was committed last night. Or, rather, an accident. The body of a middle-aged man was found just a mile north of town. His name was Robert Patrick, and he worked at the supermarket in town. The police have ruled the death an accident because they believe the man was attacked by a wild animal.

I know better. It was a Corrupted that killed him. It happened before, just two months ago and only five miles west of here in a remote forest where the unemployed occasionally hunt for deer. In my nightmare, the man named Robert Patrick had gotten lost, and it was not long before something evil picked up his scent.

The princess has not left this area. Which means the king will be nearby as well. Hunting her. I asked Briar today if it was possible for a Corrupted to kill another Corrupted. He said perhaps, if the Brothers Grimm wrote it into their story. He wryly suggested we catch two Corrupted and throw them in a cage to test the theory.

August 16, 1934

Another death, this one on the west end of town. The sheriff has ruled out another animal attack and instituted a curfew at dusk—but only for women. Despite the fact that both of the victims were men (and both of them were armed), the sheriff seems obsessed with protecting us weak little women. It’s his way.

“I wonder what they might say if they knew I’d done battle with a wolf as big as a car,” I told Briar earlier this evening.

The rabbit was sitting at the rose-colored chair by my window, cooling himself with my fan. He shrugged. “I suppose they might be impressed,” he said. “Or they might laugh and call you a liar.”

“And then perhaps I would draw for them a spear,” I offered. “And then deftly stab their police car just as I’d done the wolf so they might see what it looked like.”

“That,” Briar said, “might cause them some concern. You must never reveal yourself if you can help it, especially to people you do not know.”

What will I do, then, if I marry Richard?

August 19, 1934

(Entry burned)

August 20, 1934

My uncle has demanded that I marry Richard. What do I do? I do not love him. I do not even like him. And I can’t stop staring at that hideous mole on his cheek.

I flew into a rage when I found out. I took one of the chairs from the dining room and threw it against the wall, damaging the beautiful dark blue wallpaper. I instantly regretted it. My aunt loves the wallpaper. It makes her feel calm and safe. It makes her feel as though all of the horrible things happening in the outside world cannot get her while she is safe in this house.

I begged. My uncle is not an unkind man, nor is he a heavy drinker like the other machinists, and he does not dislike me. No, I fear that it is his love for me that is guiding his decisions now. Ever since I arrived at his doorstep and gave them the news of my parents’ deaths so many years ago, he has tried to look over me. My aunt and uncle never had kids. My aunt says she is unable to have them.

And so it has fallen to me to be the daughter. I feel so conflicted.

I cannot marry Richard …

I want to marry for love. I don’t need someone to take care of me, and clearly that is what my uncle believes.

August 23, 1934

I am not writing this in my bedroom. I have run away—or, to be more precise, Briar and I have gone on a camping trip. There was another murder last night, this time three miles west. It’s clear the creature that was once a princess wishes to stay here. Perhaps she wants to confront her father. At first, I thought the king wanted to kill her but now I fear he still wants to marry her after all these years. Does he not realize what his daughter has turned into?

“The Corruption changes them,” Briar explained to me tonight. “Even the most innocent characters grow more evil over time. They must all be destroyed and wiped away from this world forever. Do not pity any of them.”

“And what about you?” I asked. “Were you not created with the same magic pages as them?”

On that, Briar was silent.

August 24, 1934

I’ve been following the king for a day now, ever since I saw his car approaching from the south as Briar and I were making our way along the edge of a small forest where one of the hunters had disappeared. The king took a dusty road north, then parked alongside the road and got out, slinging his massive hunting rifle over his shoulder.