The Grimm Chronicles, Vol.1 (30 page)

She was holding out her phone.

At first, I thought she wanted to hand it over to me, as if there was something on the screen that had upset her and somehow, coincidentally, it had something to do with me. But when I took a step left, she followed my movement with her phone. And I realized the camera on the phone was pointed directly at me.

I turned and ran to the next block, glancing once over my shoulder. The woman was still standing in place, her phone pointed at me.

I stopped beside a posh Japanese sushi restaurant. My hand ran through my hair, thinking. Was she a spy? Did she somehow know something? Or was she just another weirdo walking around downtown?

My eyes caught my reflection in the restaurant windows. I gave myself a quick once-over, untucking my shirt from where it had bunched up at my waist.

OK. I looked good. I don’t say that too often, but in spite of the muggy weather my hair was behaving itself and the top fit snug and you could barely see the fountain pen sticking out from my pocket. I could have snapped a picture if I had my phone. I’m sure the diners wouldn’t have minded if someone standing outside had very casually taken a picture. Especially if I explained to them just how rare it was that my hair looked so perfect.

I looked past my reflection, noticing the young couple sitting next to the window. The man’s eyes were on me.

“Sorry,” I mouthed with an embarrassed shrug.

The man reached into his pocket. The woman took a sip of her wine, watching her handsome date pull out his phone.

He held it out, aiming his camera right at me. My heart went cold.

The woman turned, saw me, and reached in her purse for her camera.

I stepped back on the sidewalk. There were more people inside the restaurant looking now. Some of them pulled out their cell phones. Some didn’t.

Most of them did. And I had a funny feeling every single person with their camera phone pointed at me had played
Castle Cats
this evening.

I turned and walked, glancing just once over my shoulder. Through the windows, I could see everyone’s phone camera following me.

I crossed the street, passing a hotel with a red canopy where two well-dressed tourists were standing outside for a cigarette. I tried to shield my face from them, moving quickly. They paid me no mind, but as I walked closer to the next building where a handful of college-aged kids were walking out of another restaurant, two more cell phones appeared.

The others seemed confused. One girlfriend with curly blonde hair seemed especially upset that her boyfriend was aiming his phone’s camera at me.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she asked. “Jerry? Jerry! What are you doing, you pervert?!”

I turned my head, hoping it would stop whatever was happening. I bumped into one of the guys as I passed and mumbled an apology, keeping my head turned. The girl shouted obscenities at her boyfriend. I heard the sound of plastic cracking on the sidewalk.

“What the heck just happened?” asked the guy. I was still walking, but had my head cocked so I could overhear.

“You just took a picture of that girl!”

“I did? Oh, man. You broke my phone!”

“I’m gonna break your face, you idiot!”

I hurried across the street before the crosswalk light could change. I was only two blocks away from Grayle Tower. I could see the massive skyscraper looming over the older gothic concrete buildings ahead of me. I knew this street. There was a theatre, a sub shop that would be closed this late at night, and a trendy bar. As long as I just didn’t let my face be seen, I could still get to Grayle Tower and put a stop to all of this.

At the next intersection, I nearly walked into traffic. A red convertible sped by, honking its horn.

“Get it together!” I said to myself. My fingers tightened into fists. I stared down at the concrete curb, listening as best I could for any dangers. Milwaukee was coming alive. It was just after nine o’clock and people were leaving the theatres that lined the street a few blocks west; a symphony of high heels clicked on the sidewalk, followed by a chorus of car horns as taxis jockeyed along the curb.

I had this beautiful memory come to me: a trip to one of the beautiful old theatres with my parents. A dark stage with pillars of thick wood and dark red lights shining overhead.
Frankenstein
. Two men onstage: Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. Dr. Frankenstein was wearing a lab coat, kneeling on the stage in front of his monster. His monster was topless, dirty, wearing tattered gray pants. He had black scars all over his face and bald head.

Dr. Frankenstein begged his monster to forgive him. The monster shook his head.

Coolest. Story. Ever.

No
Frankenstein
movie ever came close to that play. The bare-bones stage … the great acting … the creepy lights … the cookies and orange juice during intermission … it was all so fantastic. Afterwards, I watched every single
Frankenstein
movie. Every single one.

None of them were as good.

I felt a calmness wash over me, temporarily staving off the fear. I looked both ways, then crossed the next street. The sidewalk was empty. On my right was a church with a tall, ancient steeple made of cream-colored bricks. Then a small business building with a clothing shop on the first floor. Through the narrow windows I could see dress racks with “20% OFF” signs.

There was a café at the end of the block. It was a hip joint, the kind that served coffee and wine and had a swanky little patio where the hipsters sat with their sweaters on the backs of their seats and cups of half-finished cappuccinos on the table.

And smartphones. Lots and lots of smartphones.

I kept one hand over my eyes like a visor, but I had to sneak a peak. There was more traffic on the street now and my ears were playing tricks on me. It seemed like a hundred different sounds—car tires on pavement, a dog barking, a couple laughing, the clink of a glass, music blaring from a stereo—were pummeling my eardrums from every direction. I
needed
to see where I was going.

The moment I looked up,
all
of the café patrons’ conversations stopped. They set down their cups of coffee, reaching into pockets and purses and little handbags. Their eyes landed on me, studying me with a zombie-like intensity.

“What do you want!” I shouted in frustration.

They held up their cell phone cameras.

I turned and ran around the block. Grayle Tower was right across the street, beside a much smaller old building with dark red bricks. Two of the streetlights were out—the ones right in front of the building. There were no cars parked on the street. No people anywhere. It was just me and the Grayles tonight.

No. Me and the Grayles and
someone else
. I could feel his presence behind me. To my right. Coming up from the other side of the block. With the empty street and all the sounds of the city partially blocked by the buildings behind me, I could hear the footsteps of one specific person coming up behind me. I could smell him, too: he was wearing cheap, weak cologne that had a nasty alcohol-tinged scent. The kind you buy at a drug store for twenty bucks.

“Boy,” I said quietly to myself, “you’ve gotta be kidding me. No way can you sneak up on me with that stinky cologne.”

The footsteps drew closer. I took a deep breath. I’ll just give whoever it is a quick chop, I thought—after all, it could just be a normal human under the spell of whatever creepy code had been put inside of that stupid
Castle Cats
game. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally stab a human being with my fountain pen.

The footsteps grew closer. There was a groan and something moved from the corner of my eye. I spun and chopped with my hand. The dark figure fell back, dropping his phone.

“Ow!”

I blinked, stepping back in shock. “Seth?”

Seth grabbed his ear. “You karate-chopped my other ear! What the heck?” He looked around, wide-eyed. “Where am I?”

“You’re in downtown Milwaukee,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Come on. We need to talk somewhere safe. Did you drive here?”

“Did I drive … um … yeah, yeah I think so. I don’t remember.”

I pulled him past a shady-looking bar with tinted windows and a neon Miller Lite sign, sidling into the alley. It was dark, full of dumpsters, and smelled only a little bit better than Seth’s ridiculous cologne.

“What are we doing in here?” Seth asked. “This alley is scary and I’m fragile! Also, was that my phone sitting on the sidewalk back there?”

“Yes.”

“Why was it broken?”

“Because I karate-chopped your head. Obviously.”

“You karate-chopped me
again
?”

“Yes.”

He pulled back, pulling his arm free from my grip. “Wait, wait, wait.” He looked around the dark alley, then shook his hands wildly in the air. “What the heck is going on?”

“It’s the phone game,” I said. “
Castle Cats
. The dwa … the creators, they put some kind of code into the game and now it’s affecting me!”

“You?!”

“Well … it’s affecting a lot of people. But you were totally under their trance.” I looked around to make sure we were still alone. The alley was dark and quiet. On the far end, a handful of college-aged students walked by on their way to another bar. “Seth, they’re controlling people’s
minds
.”

Seth narrowed his eyes, looking up at the night sky.

“Look, I know this is totally weird and unbelievable …”

“No, no,” he said. He snapped his fingers a few times. “You’re right! The whole subliminal messages thing. I remember now! I read that book you gave me. Then I
hacked into the Grayle Incorporated computers and got a look at some of the code. It shut down my computer again, and this time it totally wiped out my hard drive!”

“What did you see?” I asked anxiously. “What are they doing?”

“I don’t know.” When he saw my annoyed face, he held up his hands in defense. “It’s hard to understand! You could spend four years in college and still not understand code that complex. It’s like it was designed so that it was hard to understand.”

“OK, settle down. I’m not mad.”

“You look like you’re going to hit me again.”

I rolled my eyes. “The alley is dark. You’re just a little scared …”

“What?!” Seth puffed out his chest. “I could take you, if you didn’t attack me out of nowhere all the time.”

“Well, we can settle that another time. But we need to get to the bottom of this.”

Seth nodded, wrinkling his mouth. “So you’re saying I followed you here somehow?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

Well, Seth, because the Grayles are keeping eyes on me. Thousands and thousands of eyes. “Because … the game told you to. I don’t fully know why. Maybe they know …”

“Know what? What could they possibly know?”

“… That I’m onto their little secret,” I offered. I hoped it was enough. I didn’t want to tell him any more.

Seth blew out a puff of air, running his hands through his short hair. He started pacing. “This is wild, Alice. Like, totally wild. I remember turning on the game after my computer crashed. And then it just sort of sucked me in. Before I knew it, I was tossing cats out of the castle left and right … and then I don’t know. I’m drawing a blank.”

“There was a message in the game,” I said. “It told you to follow me.” I took a deep breath. All right. I needed Seth’s help. The least I could do was level with him a bit. “The people who created
Castle Cats
… they know that I know something about their game. They put a subliminal message in your phone telling you to follow me. Maybe even hurt me.”

“I could never hurt you. You’re my best friend.”

“Awwww.” I cocked my head. “That’s so nice. But in all seriousness, you probably would have killed me.”

“
You’re
the one who keeps attacking
me
.”

“All right, whatever. What we need to do is stop this. How do we stop it?”

Seth tapped his foot, thinking. “I don’t know. But at the very least, I can show you what I found. Let’s get out of this frightening alley.”

Chapter 6

We found Seth’s rusty old Honda parked right where I’d gotten off the bus. It made me angry because it meant he’d probably been following me ever since I left my house. And he didn’t remember any of it. He’d been driving in a daze, under the spell of those horrible Corrupted dwarfs. Who knows how carefully he was driving? Who knows what might have happened if a car had pulled in front of him? He could have accidentally killed somebody.

And guess what? The dwarfs wouldn’t have cared at all. They just wanted to keep an eye on me. Maybe they wanted me dead. Maybe they were just devious enough to have Seth do it, too. Or try, at least.

Seth drove back to my house and parked in the driveway, a privilege only he was granted. Being on my parents’ good side had its advantages.

Which reminded me …

“Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm before he could leave the care. “My parents. I think they were playing
Castle Cats
. They were acting really weird when I left. They had their phones sitting on the coffee table. They always keep their phones charging in the kitchen where they get the best reception.”

“Kind of defeats the purpose of a mobile phone,” Seth said. “Let’s just get their phones away from them and figure it out from there.”

“Oh man,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m scared, Seth. What if my parents are under a spell and they try to kill me or something? Weirder stuff has happened today. I don’t think I can handle that.”

Seth took a deep breath. “Let’s just get their phones from them first.”

“Right. OK.” We walked into my house. My parents were watching TV like a pair of normal middle-aged people, as if they hadn’t just hours ago totally acted like a bunch of zombie weirdoes. Mom had her legs up over Dad’s and Dad had a plastic bowl of popcorn on top of her legs.

“Hey Mr. and Mrs. Goodenough,” Seth said.

My parents glanced away from the TV. They both smiled at Seth, then looked at me. Their smiles faded. They both sat up, grabbed their smartphones sitting on the coffee table, and pointed the cameras at me.

Seth looked at me. “Um …”

“You see?” I asked. “Test them.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Goodenough?” Seth called out. He walked around the couch. My parents kept their phones on me. I stepped right. The phones—and my parents’ creepy expressionless gazes—followed me.

Seth waved a hand in front of their face. “I’ve been doing a lot of drugs lately.”

No response.

“Also, I’ve been selling the drugs to children,” Seth added. “And I pooped on your driveway.”

“Ewwww,” I said. My parents were less disgusted. In fact, they still hadn’t even so much as blinked.

Seth walked behind them and looked at the screens of their smartphones. His eyes narrowed.

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Mister Scientist,” I said. “What do you see?”

“I see
you
,” he answered. “And judging from the little notification on the top of their screens, it looks like this footage is being transmitted somewhere.”

“All right, the party’s over.” I walked over and grabbed the phones, handing them to Seth.

My parents blinked at the same time. They looked at their outstretched hands, confused.

“Honey,” Mom said, staring up at me. “What’s going on?” She looked at Seth. “Oh, hello, Seth. Why do you have our phones?”

“Wait a minute,” Dad said, glancing at the movie playing on the TV. “How did they find out that guy was a spy? What did we miss here? What time is it?”

“You guys fell asleep,” I said. “You were dozing off when we came in.”

Mom’s eyes widened. “Oh. So why does Seth have our cell phones?”

“There’s a virus in the
Castle Cats
game,” Seth explained, sliding his fingers across the screens of my parents’ phones. “I’m deleting them for you so the virus doesn’t spread.”

“A virus?” Mom asked, concerned. “Is that bad? Is that like those viruses on computers that give away your credit card number?”

“Worse,” Seth said with wide eyes. “This virus uses your phone to store dirty pictures.”

“Well, I don’t see how that’s so bad,” Dad murmured. Mom hit him on the chest. He playfully pantomimed pain, reaching for the remote. “I’m going to rewind this movie. I need to re-watch the last fifteen minutes or I’m going to be completely lost.”

Mom ignored him. “Thank you, Seth. How did you hear about this?”

“Oh, word is spreading pretty fast,” Seth said. “It’s all over the Internet. Big news. Haven’t you heard?”

“I didn’t know a thing,” Mom said, wide-eyed. “And to be honest, I’m a little embarrassed that you kids know we were playing that stupid game.”

“Everyone gets addicted to them,” Seth mumbled. His thumbs slid deftly across the phones’ screens. He handed them back to my mom. “Good to go. Don’t download the game again until they fix it, though.”

“You saved us again, Seth old boy,” said my dad. “Help yourself to one snack of your choosing from the kitchen.”

“Thanks, Mr. G!” Seth exclaimed. He made his way into the kitchen. I followed him. The first thing he went for was the fridge. When he opened it, his eyes widened. “Oh boy. We really do have a problem, don’t we?”

I looked inside the fridge. On the shelf underneath the milk and OJ were boxes and boxes of
Carameltastic
candy bars.

Seth reached for one. I slapped his hand. “Grab an apple, for crying out loud.”

“Oh, right. Like that’s going to be any tastier,” he muttered, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl on the countertop.

“Seth, are you staying the night?” Mom asked as we passed back into the living room.

“Um …” Seth looked at me.

It was a good question. Obviously, whoever was watching me through the camera phones had seen me with Seth at this point. And the fact that he’d been sent to follow me meant they had a pretty good idea that we were close friends. Maybe that had been their game all along. What a dastardly thought: using my own best friend to kill me. It just made me even angrier.

What if they killed him for failing? Or kidnapped him?

“He’s staying the night,” I said. “If that’s OK.”

“Oh, it’s fine.” Mom clasped her hands together excitedly. “I’ll make you waffles in the morning, Seth.”

“Aw, that’s a great idea, Mrs. G!”

“Come on,” I told him. “You can show me that thing on my computer.”

It all sounded so scandalous, but you have to remember: we were best friends. This wasn’t some random guy staying the night; this was a boy who, at the tender age of three, had actually pooped in my parents’ bathtub during a neighborhood cookout.

So … yeah.

“We’re coming in,” I announced at the door to my room. I opened it slowly, hoping Briar—if he was there—would understand.

“That’s a really weird thing to announce,” Seth said.

Inside, my bedroom was empty. My lamp light was on, though, and my laptop was open. I turned on the overhead light.

“Ah, just like I remember it,” Seth said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and admiring the random clutter. He walked over to my pink dresser, examining the dozen or so brushes and combs. “No more David Hasselhoff posters?”

“They were posters of rock stars!” I exclaimed, embarrassed. “And seriously? Who even knows what Baywatch even is anymore besides you?”

“I have the DVD’s,” he said defensively. “And the guys in your posters all
looked
like the guy from
Baywatch
.” He flexed his non-existent muscles, strutting around the room. “Everyone with their shirts off, staring at the camera with hungry eyes. Oooh, look at my pecks! Oooh, that shirt was chafing me! Now my pants are chafing me, too!”

I laughed. “Well they weren’t from
Baywatch
. And they’re gone now so don’t even worry about it.”

OK. The posters were in my closet. But he didn’t need to know that. To be safe, I closed the closet door.

“So how are we gonna do this?” Seth asked, sitting down at my desk. He tapped a few buttons on my computer. “Hey, what are these?” He grabbed two slips of paper.

I walked over and sat on my bed, holding out my hand. “Give.”

“The Milwaukee Public Museum Fundraiser Gala?” he asked. “Are you actually going to this thing?”

“Yeah …” I looked around again. Was Briar here right now, invisible? I glanced at the floor, looking for an indentation in the blue carpeting where the rabbit might be standing.

“Who are you going with?” he asked.

I turn back to him. “What now?”

“Who are you going with? There are two tickets.”

“Don’t worry about that. Worry about the
Castle Cats
.”

“OK, gimme your phone.” Seth went online, typing in an obscure Web site. A little bar showed up on the computer with a percentage. 10%. 45%. 75%.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m downloading a program I need to see the code,” Seth explained. “I’m also backing up your hard drive so that you can recover all your files after
Castle Cats
sabotages your computer.”

I watched him connect my phone to the laptop with the white cord that I usually used to put songs on my phone. I don’t think the makers had
this
type of use in mind when they packaged the cord with my phone. Seth had his program open, and on my phone,
Castle Cats
was being downloaded directly to the computer. With a click of a button, the screen went black. Lines and lines of strange characters and numbers and words appeared on the screen.

“What is all that?” I asked.

“It’s the code,” Seth said. “This is what every computer program is made of. It’s basically like a word document and on each line is a command. The command tells the program what to do if you press your finger on the screen. Or what happens with a cat is cleared from the castle. Or how to restart the game after the stupid cats take over the castle.”

“It’s confusing,” I said. “I don’t know what any of this means.”

“Even
I
don’t know what all of this means,” Seth said, “but that’s not important. What’s important is the new code that’s been inserted near the bottom. The code that I can’t read without causing the computer to crash. Get ready.” His finger pressed down on the mouse and the cursor on the screen began scrolling down through the lines of code. The strange numbers and words flitted by, as if he was moving quickly through a Word document with white text on a black background.

“Here!” Seth said, taking his finger off the mouse. All of the code on the screen flickered, then disappeared. The screen went black, save for a little white rectangle blip on the upper left-hand corner.

“What happened?” I asked.

Seth leaned back in his chair. “Same thing that happened when I tried it.”

“Well what was it? What did it say?”

He crossed his legs. “I saw a little more of the code that time, and you’re totally right about the whole subliminal message thing. There’s definitely something in there that’s telling people to buy those candy bars. And that’s just the beginning. I recognized a ton of other products, too. It could be happening all over the country. All over the world, even!”

“So …”

Seth said nothing. He was giving me a weird look. A pitying, worried sort of look.

“There’s more,” I guessed.

He nodded.

“Just spill it. What was it?”

“New code,” Seth said. “I … didn’t see it last time. It caught my eyes because the text was blue.”

I was starting to get nervous. I didn’t like this look he was giving me. It was as if he’d seen my death on that computer screen. “More explanation, please.”

“It just, well, I’m pretty sure I saw your name. Not just your name, but code for a picture, too. Commands, too.”

“I knew it!” My fist pounded the bed. “Commands for what?”

“Oh, you know. The usual. Keep an eye on her. Text an update. Take pictures of her. Kill her.”

My heart nearly stopped in my chest. Those bastards. They would more than happily send someone else to do their dirty work. And it was just so perfect, wasn’t it? Hypnotize some innocent fool who likes playing phone games, and then once I’m dead the innocent fool gets hauled off to prison and those stupid dwarfs keep raking in the money from their super hidden candy bar commands and whatever other devious schemes they had planned.

“So what do we do?” I asked. “How do we stop it?”

Seth shook his head. “It’s impossible. I can’t get inside the code. We’re lucky it didn’t blow up your laptop.”

I stared at him.

“I’m not kidding,” he said. “I mean, unless I can sneak into their server room and access the code locally … and even then I might not know how to delete it without damaging the game, which would then of course cause all sorts of trouble if we got caught. I mean, they could sue me.”