Mary Mary Quite Contrary ( A Grimm Diaries Prequel #5 ) (3 page)

Elizabeth’s husband had figured out how to turn
her torturing into a historical fun fiesta. He started inventing torture
devices, inspired by the way they tortured the
enemy soldiers in war. A couple of centuries later, these instruments became so
famous that they were mentioned in one of the most loved nursery rhymes, but
I’ll get to that later on.

Elizabeth’s husband’s first birthday gift was one
of these instruments: a tool that crushed the thumb with the tightening of a
screw – a nasty piece of art that I later
recommended
to Adolf Hitler in World War Two
– of course,
the bastard took my advice. Elizabeth called it the Silver Bells for it was made
of pure silver and she thought it was easy to use like ringing a bell.

Her husband also noticed that she had an obsession
with hurting her victims in the genitals, so he invented another instrument
which she had called Cockleshells. I’d leave it to your imagination to think of
what it did. Even I thought it was too extreme. The instrument’s name was self-
explanatory.

This thirty-something Elizabeth definitely had
issues. She needed an Alienist – which was the name they used at the time for psychiatrist,
given that a crazy person was
alienated
from real and sane life.

Lastly, her husband invents the guillotine, which
they nicknamed the Maiden because it was usually used on maidens. Elizabeth had
a knack
 
for torturing girls more than boys –
unlike me. I am not a sexist, I love to burn them all.

I decided I couldn’t bring myself to watch
their happily-married torturing sessions anymore. But
I had to see. I had to know what people, possessed by the splinter of the
mirror, could do, and how far they would go. It was obvious by now that no one
was coming to collect the splinters from her eyes and heart; that there was no
demon that possessed her through the shards. This mirror was pure evil on its
own, which puzzled me, really puzzled me. I was not pure evil. I was once an
angel after all.

I spent my days waiting outside in the garden of
their castle, but then I had to hide again when they started using the garden
to bury the bodies. Day by day, the tortured corpses were piling up six feet
under, and the few mistresses and maids who knew about their secrets helped
them bury the dead. Some garden, I thought to myself. I wanted to have one like
that in Hell.

Most of their victims were young girls. The maids
lured the girls into the castle, claiming the countess was offering jobs. I
knew Elizabeth liked to torture peasant girls because they were poor and their
parents usually kept their mouths shut, afraid to offend the noble families who
ruled the land by asking about their lost girls.

But why did the peasant girls have to be so young?

It was two years later when I found out why.
Elizabeth’s husband hadn’t returned from war for almost a year. And that,
ladies and gentlemen, saints and sinners, was when she started to really step
into the dark side of her soul. All that preceded was nothing compared what was
in store.

Elizabeth ordered her maids to fetch her the
ripest and most beautiful girls in the land. Young naïve girls visited the
castle, enamored by the idea of meeting the beautiful countess and maybe
getting a chance to work and support their families. Except that Elizabeth had
another destiny mapped out for them.

After the girls ate and danced for days in the
castle, Elizabeth slaughtered them and filled her marble bathtub with their
blood, and then… bathed in the young girl’s blood.

Elizabeth was growing older and the darkness
inside her was eating not only her soul, but also her skin and features. There
was a price for everything – still is. Just ask me.

I don’t know where she had gotten the idea from,
but bathing in the young virgin’s blood revived her soul and she conjured the
youth
she had lost with aging.

Hundreds of girls were tortured then killed to
feed the bloodbath. Elizabeth was at the zenith of her darkness, and my
attraction and fascination with the mirror grew stronger. I started
procrastinating on my jobs in the world. There were people who had to be
seduced, cities that had to burned, and wars that had to be started, but I was
only interested in Elizabeth Bathory and her bloodbath.

Historians will tell you many other facts that
might contradict mine about her story. But we would agree on one thing:
Elizabeth Bathory was the first known serial killer in the world. And yes, it
was a woman.

Year after year, Elizabeth’s husband never
returned, and the number of missing, young peasant girls in the land was
increasing. Little did they know about Elizabeth’s garden where almost one
third of the land’s
young girls were buried.

Parents who had kids in Europe thought twice
before visiting Sárvár in Slovakia where Elizabeth now lived in her latter
days, in a scary castle called Čachtice. Rumors about demons kidnapping
young girls had spread all over Europe. But as dumb as the peasants behaved,
they started to smell it, the blood of their daughters, reeking from the castle
up the hill.

One day, Elizabeth took interest in one particular
girl that was sent to her by the maids. A girl they had found lost in the
woods, and was as beautiful as the rest. Only something about her was different
and unexplainable. The sight of that girl made the splinters in Elizabeth’s eye
glimmer in red. Elizabeth felt uncomfortable and took extra pleasure, slow and
deliberate, in torturing the girl. Elizabeth started with the Silver Bells
appetizer, then the cockleshells main dish, and ate dessert to the sound of the
girl’s dripping blood, filling the tub.

But still, as the girl died, Elizabeth felt
uncomfortable. She parted the dead girl’s eyelids and stared shockingly into
her eyes. There was something shiny in those dead blackened eyes. It was a
splinter of a mirror.

Elizabeth went mad and ordered the maids to burn
the girl, but the maid advised her otherwise. The whole land was watching the
castle, suspecting Elizabeth to be the demon that killed their daughters.
Stirring fire would have raised suspicions. It was better to bury her deep in
the garden.

And they did.

Then one night, Elizabeth woke up to murmurs
outside her bedroom window. She looked outside and saw the girl standing tall
as if she hadn’t killed her and bathed in her blood days ago. The girl
approached her and wrote her name in blood on the window. It was Mary,
Elizabeth’s daughter, and both splinters in their eyes shone in the dark.

I backed off as I watched them collide. I didn’t
know that those who got a
splinter in their eyes
or hearts were immortal. But now I knew, and I wasn’t comfortable with it.
There was another greater force than mine in this world. It was growing and I
couldn’t stop it.

Mary slashed at Elizabeth in her guilty weakness.
Although Elizabeth was made of darkness, she was appalled she had killed her
own daughter – which didn’t really kill her.

The more Mary slashed at Elizabeth with her long
nails, the more Mary started to look normal and beautiful again. The cycle of
doom was bound to never end. To preserve her beauty, Elizabeth had to kill and
bathe in the young girls’ blood. And for Mary to look normal, she had to come
and slash her mother every night. I thought it was Merry Go Round. Now, I
learned it was Mary Go Round.

One happy family, I must say. Even my family
wasn’t that fucked up. Oh. Wait. I didn’t actually have a family, but they
wouldn’t have been
that
bad, would they?

Mary didn’t age, and she needed to kill and hurt
other people in order for her to stay alive. It turned out she didn’t just have
to hurt her mother, but other young girls and boys.

Finally, Elizabeth Bathory was convicted of her
murders and sentenced for life in her own castle. Parents of the dead daughters
were allowed to visit her and hurt her with the same tools on holidays – I am
not going to comment on that now. I will stick to that smug smile
on my face.

But the poor parents couldn’t do it, so Mary
visited her every night and bestowed wrath upon her. She tortured her mother
with Silver Bells, Cockleshells. All of this mess was because of the splinter
which they didn’t know existed in their eyes.

Well, I knew. But I wasn’t really fond of happy
endings. Happy beginnings? Yes. But always leave the endings for me.

Even though Mary was darkness itself, the peasant
kids loved her for avenging their sisters, cousins, and girlfriends buried in Elizabeth’s
garden. They even made a nursery rhyme for Mary, one that they danced and
jumped rope to. It sounded like this:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells, and cockle shells,

And pretty maids all in a row.

When I think of it right now, the song made sense.
They mentioned the Silvers Bells, the Cockle Shells, and even the garden where
Mary and the girls were once buried. I wasn’t really sure about what they meant
with pretty maids. Was it a reference to the Maiden, or to the pretty girls whose
blood Elizabeth bathed in?

But years later, I realized that Mary was a danger
to me. The amount of chaos she caused in the world was conflicting with my
plans. It’s true that I liked the badass evil in her, but only if she had
worked for me, which I knew was impossible. She was much darker and stronger
than my wicked self. I didn’t even want to introduce myself to her or let her
know about me. Especially, when years went by and I couldn’t learn what the
source of that splinter in her eyes was. Just to be clear on how evil she is,
you should know that she was the one who convinced Hitler to destroy the world,
appearing to him through a secret mirror he had in his room. That’s why no one
knew where Hitler’s body really was. When he failed making mashed potatoes out
of the rest of the world, she punished him by pulling him into
the mirror with her.

I also found out that I was never going to be able
to remove the splinters from Mary’s eyes, because I couldn’t come near her. I
had to find a way to kill her though, or at least, curse her.

The boys and girls in Hell were of no use to me. I
had banned Peter Pan from Hell at the time for rebelling against me, and
refusing to grow up and work for me. He had also convinced some of my students
– mostly young boys – to leave Hell and come with him
to a silly place he had discovered – or imagined. He called it Neverland, and
his followers called themselves the Lost Boys.

It puzzled me why Peter wanted me as his enemy
when I raised him and spoiled him in my Scholomance school. But I was intrigued
nonetheless. He insisted on abandoning Hell but it seemed he had no sweet spot
for Heaven nonetheless. What was that all about, Pete?

But enough with the boy who wouldn’t’ want to grow
up. I am writing this to tell you about Mary, and about her role in the fairy
tale world. Things that the Brothers Grimm didn’t want you to know.

I don’t blame them. You’ve seen how many of the
characters were messed up so far.

In my quest to destroy Mary who was possessed by
the splinter of a crashed mirror, I heard about how Gerda saved her friend Kai
and removed the splinter. But I couldn’t come near them. They were protected by
a higher rank in the wizard world so that I couldn’t come near them. And they
hated my guts. Who didn’t?

I thought help from Death itself, a giggly,
enchanting lady who lived alone in the forest with her Death-to-be young
daughter. But Death was busy. Getting older, she was preparing her
sixteen-year-old daughter to take over soon. I loved this family. Like really
loved them. They knew how to slaughter with a smile on their faces.

So no help from Peter, or Death, I tried to
persuade a young vampire called Wendy Darling, whom people loved to call
Sleeping Beauty, to help me get rid of Mary Mary Quite Contrary. Unexpectedly,
Sleeping Beauty reminded me of something really bad I had done to her in the
past. The shit I did to people always came back to me. Sometimes, I felt like
the boy who cried wolf. It didn’t matter how loud he cried. No one was coming
for help anymore.

But
Rumpelstiltskin had an idea. He had been talking to
ancient witches and wizards who advised him that you can only fight fire with
fire.

“What does that mean?” I asked Rumpelstiltskin.

“It means that Mary is made of splinters,” Rumpelstiltskin said.
“which is glass, which is mirrors. So instead of fire with fire, this war will
be mirrors with mirrors.”

“Aha,” I raised an eyebrow. “Never took you for a smart dude,” I
said to Rumpelstiltskin. “So the only way to get rid of Mary is to curse her
with a mirror?”

“I’d suggest trap her in a mirror,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “Did you
know that you can trap demons in mirrors?”

“No shit?”

“And did you know you can time travel through mirrors? Why do
you think high priests of Venice prohibited mirrors for years?
Mirrors are the optimum carrier for evil.”

“How come I don’t know about that stuff? I am freakin’ Lucifer.”

“Because you spent your time hatin’ not participatin’”
Rumpelstiltskin said.