The Grimm Curse (Once Upon A Time Is Now) Read online

  “Beth and Gregory Peyton’s parents alerted police Tuesday evening when the two Woodland High students never came home from school…”

  Rachel snatched up the remote and turned the TV off, then opened the oven door, slipped on an oven mitt, and pulled out the roasting rack of lamb. She balanced it perfectly on one hand while picking up the glistening ham with the other, and walked out of the kitchen.

  She walked across the living room, carrying the food past her floor-to-ceiling windows, to a doorway that opened to a broad staircase heading downstairs. She moved down the curving stairway, which seemed to go on forever. The smooth white walls became darker and mustier, until, finally, toward the bottom of the stairs, the smooth walls gave way to mossy, damp stone, hundreds of years old.

  Rachel lifted her foot and pushed open the heavy oak door at the bottom of the stairs, then moved into the dark basement. Actually, “basement” is far too kind a word. It was more of a dungeon—dark, with an uneven stone floor and stone walls, and a massive cast iron oven against one wall. The oven had been specially cast, over two hundred years ago, and built to Rachel’s exacting specifications. The door alone was six feet wide and three feet tall. Rachel put the food down on a huge oak cutting table, then put on a pair of blacksmith’s gloves and opened the oven door. Fire roared out from a massive blaze engulfing a quarter cord of firewood inside. Rachel left the door open and the firelight illuminated the dungeon. Against the far wall was an array of slaughtering tools: two heavy iron hooks hung from the ceiling, a chopping block sat squat in the between the hooks, planted in the stone floor, with an axe sticking up from it, its gleaming blade embedded in the scarred, stained, ancient wood.

  In the center of the dungeon’s stone floor was a well; a well that Rachel herself had dug, in 1889, with the help of a couple of friends—friends who were no longer with us—thank you very much, Eustace, may you rot in hell, you vile pig, Rachel thought as she leaned over the well and looked down.

  No human eyes could see through the darkness at the bottom of that damp pit, but Rachel could see quite clearly.

  “You haven’t touched that delicious beef bourguignon I slaved over for you!” Rachel said, sweetly admonishing.

  “Please…” came a girl’s voice, echoing up from the darkness, faint with exhaustion and terror, from thirty feet below. “Please…we can’t eat any more…please just let us go…” the girl’s voice caught in her throat, and she lapsed into sobs.

  “Picky, picky,” Rachel said, wagging a finger at them. “Let me put it this way…”

  And then Rachel’s pretty blue eyes transformed into green, reptilian slits, and her perfect skin revealed mottled gray patches as she roared in a voice that bore no resemblance to the sweet voice she had used only a moment before:

  “EAT OR DIE,” the Rachel/witch roared down the well, and the twins, a boy and girl, Beth and Gregory Peyton, screamed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Grimm House & The Breaking Of The Seal

  The sun was just about to set as I reached Wroughtwood Place. If I had been riding in a car I would have missed the street sign, which was covered with the low branches of a huge tree. But on foot I was able to see the sign as I approached and the wind blew a few leaves off the tree to reveal it. I knew I was only a few moments from the “Grimm house,” as the old librarian had called it.

  Under the street sign was another sign—a yellow triangle that said DEAD END. I turned the corner and headed down the dead-end street. The funny thing about Wroughtwood Place was that there seemed to be no houses; the road was a little rougher than the neatly paved streets near the center of town—Wroughtwood Place was on the edge of town, backed right up to the forest. The road curved, and I couldn’t see what was ahead until I was almost right up on it—the Grimm house—the only house on the street, at the end of the dead-end.

  I stopped and stared. You’ve gotta be kidding me, was what I was thinking.

  If you Google “haunted house,” you will see a bunch of pictures that look exactly like 742 Wroughtwood Place. I’m serious. It was like the cover picture on a book of ghost stories—a big, broken-down house, it looked like it was at least a hundred years old. It was painted blue a long time ago, but what was left of the paint was peeling off, showing the gray, rotten-looking wood underneath. The windows were tall, and came to a point at the top, and everything about the house seemed to be sagging: the porch was sagging, the roof was sagging, as well as the gate that was hanging from the iron fence that surrounded the place. It didn’t just look like a haunted house, it looked like a cliché of a haunted house. I swear, if you hung a fake plastic skeleton from the bare tree by the porch, you would have yourself a perfect Halloween Haunted House and you could charge $5 bucks to take little kids on a tour through it and scare them stupid. But this was definitely the place, there was no doubt about it. The number 742 was plain to see, the tarnished brass numbers nailed by the front door.

  As I walked toward the house, I noticed it not only looked creepy, it felt creepy. Little things were weird, like the fact that all of the normal sounds of the outdoors—birds chirping, leaves rustling in the wind, even the faint sound of traffic in the distance—all of it was suddenly gone and it was very quiet, and very cold. Not cold from the outside; it was like the cold was coming from inside me.

  I walked toward the house, my footsteps the only sound. I pushed open the iron gate and headed up the broken brick walk, walking past the tall weeds that had choked out the lawn long ago. I hesitated for a second before stepping up on the porch—half-afraid it might collapse—but I risked it, and went to the front door and knocked.

  The door creaked open. I swear, I am not kidding you. I knocked and the heavy old door slowly opened with a crreeak. It was dark inside—too dark to see anything clearly.

  “Hello?” I said, not very loudly. I didn’t believe in ghosts or monsters (yet), but I was still creeped out by the whole scene, and I wasn’t exactly sure I wanted to catch the attention of whoever or whatever was currently living at 742 Wroughtwood Place. So I just stood there, not sure what to do next. I thought very seriously about turning around and heading back to town, but just then, something inside the house caught my eye. Actually, it hurt my eye—a bright glint from the setting sun reflected off of the glass covering a picture on the entryway wall, just a few feet from the front door. I squinted and moved my head around so I could see the picture better and then, when I got a clear look at it, I got the weird feeling again that I had been there before.

  I knew that picture. Somewhere, sometime, I had seen that picture, but I couldn’t see it clearly until I leaned into the doorway and got a closer look, and once I did, I actually shivered. But not from the cold.

  It was a picture of me.

  Four years old, blonde crew-cut, standing on the porch I was standing on right at that moment, squinting up at the camera with a big grin.

  Me.

  I recognized myself, even at age four, but even weirder, I recognized the picture itself. I had seen it many times and I recognized everything about it—the little overalls I was wearing, the sun on my grinning little face, making me squint…and the small toy in my hand.

  I remember that little red truck…the one with the left front wheel that wobbled…

  I leaned in farther, stepping one foot into the house, and just as I looked closer at the picture, at that little toy truck—

  “Jacob?”

  I am telling you, I nearly jumped about ten feet into the air. I jerked back, out of the doorway, stumbling, my heart pounding, and I saw a guy in a business suit standing at the foot of the stairway inside, looking at me.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said, smiling awkwardly. He was not at all what the kiddies would expect on their Halloween tour. He was as normal-looking as you can get: neat, conservative suit and tie, neat, conservative brown hair in a neat, conservative cut; neat, conservative smile with neat, conservative teeth. He looked like a banker, or an anchorman
on the news. He walked toward me and held out his neat, conservative hand.

  “I’m Bill Smith, attorney for the estate,” he said. I shook his hand and he looked at the picture on the wall, then back at me, then back at the picture. “Are you Jacob? Jacob Grimm?”

  I hesitated. I had seen enough Law & Order to know you have to watch what you say to lawyers. And anyway, I was still getting over having the crap scared out of me.

  “Yes,” I said, finally.

  “Boy, have we been looking for you!” lawyer Smith said, in a booming voice. He seemed very relieved, and he turned toward the dining room and motioned for me to come with him. I followed him to the dining room and he pulled out a couple of chairs so we could sit at the big, heavy wooden table.

  “I managed to track you back to Child Services in L.A., but they have been less than forthcoming regarding your, ah, current guardianship status,” he said. Then he stopped and looked over my shoulder, out the front door.

  “Are your, ah, folks with you?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. He seemed confused. “You’re…by yourself?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Oh,” he said again. “How did you get here?”

  “Train,” I said. I didn’t say anything more and he blinked at me several times, like he was waiting for me to say more.

  “Train,” he said, forcing a smile to cover up how confused he seemed to be. “From Los Angeles, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, then!” he exclaimed, after blinking at me some more. On the floor near the head of the table were two big briefcases the size of suitcases—the kind lawyers carry to court. Smith continued talking as he lifted one of the briefcases onto the table and opened it and started pulling out thick stacks of papers clipped together with big black steel clamps.

  “I’m a tax attorney, so the probate issues are a little new to me,” he said, as he laid the papers out in neat, conservative piles. “I’m originally from Woodland. My father was your great-uncle’s lawyer. He drew up the will. My father passed away last year, but your great uncle left very specific instructions, so we should be able to get through it all without too much trouble, I hope.”

  “Get through what?” I asked.

  Smith looked confused again. Then his eyes softened at me and he said, “The reading of the will, son.”

  “What will?” I said.

  “Eustace’s will. Your great uncle,” he said.

  “My great uncle’s dead?” I said.

  Now Smith looked really confused.

  “I’m sorry, I assumed that’s why you’re here…” he said in a kind of halfhearted way, trailing off, like he wanted me to explain everything to him.

  “When did he die?” I asked him.

  “Four days ago,” Smith said. “You…didn’t know?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said.

  “Why, ah…if I may ask…why did you come here, then?” he said.

  I couldn’t think of a good answer, so I just shrugged.

  “Uh huh,” Smith said, after staring at me for a long moment. Then he started stacking and re-stacking the documents on the table. “Goodness. This is a bit awkward, then. Hm. Give me a moment, I have to think about this…” Smith rubbed his chin and picked up a piece of paper and studied it.

  I waited, looking around, noticing for the first time just how strange the house was. Along one wall of the parlor, next to the dining room, were rows of shelves with books and bizarre knickknacks crammed into every spare inch of space. Hanging on the opposite parlor wall was a large metal shield and a huge plaster sculpture of something that looked like a dragon. I got up from the table and wandered into the parlor and saw, hanging on another wall, was a long row of jaws—a dozen or more, ranging from tiny little jaws to massive jaws open wide, with fierce yellow teeth that looked as sharp as razors. They were too big to be bear jaws, and too weird to be shark jaws, at least as far as I knew. I stared at them, wondering just what in the world I had wandered into.

  Smith cleared his throat and I turned back to him.

  “We, ah, we can at least begin with the reading of the will before your par— er, your guardians can get here,” he said. He lifted the second big briefcase up onto the table.

  “Your great-uncle Eustace said that you should read the will in its entirety before we proceed with anything else. He was very adamant about that.” As Smith spoke, he opened the briefcase and took out a leather-bound document the size of the Los Angeles phone book, and put it on the table.

  “My father witnessed the will, then placed it at an undisclosed location, with Eustace’s instructions that it not be opened by anyone but you, and not until the time of his death.” Smith took an ornate, ancient-looking dagger from his briefcase. “He, ah, insisted that you break the seal with this.”

  Smith held the dagger out to me, then turned the leather-bound will toward me so I could see the heavy wax seal which had been stamped onto the wide velvet belt that wrapped around the thick book like a belt. Stamped into the red wax seal were the initials “EWG,” and over the letters was a kind of imprint that looked like the metal shield hanging in the parlor.

  I looked down at the will. I started to slide the blade of the dagger under the seal, to cut it open, when suddenly a kind of awful feeling came over me—I suddenly felt like once I broke that seal, my life would change forever. And not necessarily in a good way.

  But that’s what I had wanted, right? To get out of Van Nuys, to get away from Heather and Gerald and the “special” school and all of the trouble and crap I was going through. That’s what I had wanted. A different life.

  Right?

  It never occurred to me that “different” might also mean “very creepy and possibly dangerous.”

  Smith cleared his throat softly, shuffling his feet.

  “The, ah, the will is quite long,” Smith said softly, glancing at his watch.

  I looked at him for a while, until he looked away. Then I looked back down at the will.

  Then I slid the blade of the dagger under the blood-red wax seal, and sliced through it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Gorgon Is Loosed

  Rachel Eaton steered the Range Rover with one greasy hand, while munching on some fried food in her other hand. There was a large cardboard bucket between her thighs—the grease from the fried food inside was seeping through the cardboard and staining her yoga tights. She had grease all over her lips and down her chin; drops of grease and other stains speckled the front of her white Spandex tank top.

  She shoved a huge bite into her wide jaws—her teeth had lengthened and sharpened and they crunched powerfully through the flesh and bone. She closed her eyes in ecstasy.

  “And the earth spilt forth the fruit of humanity and all were fed to bursting on the flesh that satisfies every urge, every need; the flesh that is life itself, in the fullest expression of Nature…”

  Sixteen years, Rachel thought, savoring the food in her mouth. Sixteen years of fasting for a real meal, eating the putrid food of the dirtfolk…godawful stuff…tasteless, useless pablum that left her sick, empty, and bitter with hatred. But now the Huntsman was gone. Gone, gone, gone…forever!

  Rachel devoured the food in her hand, overcome with pleasure. She was so overcome that she didn’t see the intersection until she was upon it. She was driving too fast, impatient to get back home from the market and begin really feeding again. She didn’t see the Sheriff’s patrol car crossing in front of her at the intersection until it was almost too late and she nearly collided with it. But she whipped around it at the last second before speeding off. After a moment, the flashing lights in her rearview mirror caught her attention.

  “Damn!” she said, sputtering chunks of food over the dashboard. She yanked the wheel to the right and stopped on the gravel shoulder of the road with a short skid. She watched as Sheriff Ansel Cord took his sweet time getting out of the patrol car behind her. He hitched up his pant
s and ambled toward the Range Rover.

  Rachel stuffed the bucket of food behind her seat, wiped her hands on her tights, and her long, sharp, yellowed teeth retracted back to form a normal-looking, perfect white smile. She glanced in the mirror and wiped the grease from her face with the back of her arm, then smoothed her long, blonde hair and pressed the button to open her window. She looked up with her prettiest, wide-eyed, little-girl expression at Sheriff Cord as he reached her window.

  “I am so sorry, Ansel,” she pouted. “Please don’t give me another ticket. My insurance company said they’d drop me.”

  “Rachel, you have got to slow down or you’re gonna kill somebody,” Sheriff Cord said.

  “Oh, my,” Rachel said, putting her hand on her chest. “God forbid. Lord knows I would never want anything like that to happen.”

  The sheriff glanced into the back of the Rover and noticed ten bags of groceries which were tossed hastily inside. Sheriff Ansel Cord was forty-four and he wore a moustache that he thought made him look like Tom Selleck, from Magnum P.I. Magnum was a TV detective that Sheriff Cord had watched as a young boy. Magnum was handsome, charming, and all of the girls were crazy about him. Ansel joined the Woodland Sheriff’s Dept. right out of high school, as soon as his moustache came in thick, and he’d been wondering for years why none of the women in town were crazy about him. But that didn’t stop him from trying. He had never married and he wasn’t about to—he wanted to stay “available.” And, after years of hanging out at the bars in Woodland, Beedleton, and even Medford, Sheriff Ansel Cord never found a girl who went crazy over his moustache and badge, and now he spent most evenings drinking beer alone and watching reruns of Magnum P.I.

  “You catering something tonight?” Sheriff Cord asked Rachel, looking at the groceries in the back of her Range Rover.