The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (12 page)

“Well?” Mom asked. She was standing in the kitchen over a boiling pot of noodles, her arms crossed.

“I was helping a classmate at the library,” I said. “Is that OK? Or do you want to ground me again?”

“I do,” Dad said from the couch. He turned down the TV and looked at me. “I’d like to ground you for two more weekends.”

“What?! Why?” I exclaimed.

“Because of that attitude,” Dad said. “Your mom doesn’t need that. She just wanted to know why you were late.”

“Couldn’t you just give me the benefit of the doubt?” I asked, exasperated.

Dad shook his head. “Not until you give us a reason to trust you.”

I went upstairs, angry and upset. Briar was waiting for me with a sympathetic look on his furry mug.

“It will be difficult to maintain our training regimen if you’re not allowed out of your room.”

“I’ll do jumping jacks,” I said, walking over to the window. Nope, no way down from up here. Not without a ladder or something. Even a hero couldn’t jump from the second floor without risking injury.

“I do hope you’re joking. Jumping jacks are so …
introductory
.” Briar shuddered. “The thought of training a hero to fight Corrupted by simply putting him or her on a
jumping jacks
routine sounds outright disastrous.”

“What do you have for me?” I asked, glancing at the computer.

“Ah yes.” Briar spun in the chair, minimizing the browser window where he’d been fooling around on Facebook. He pulled up a second window. “July 5, 1895. New York City. A fire destroys the Window Creek Orphanage. Twenty children die, another seven have severe burns. The mistresses get out alive. The fire is said to have been caused by a fire in the kitchen.”

“More.”

Briar pulled up another browser window. “September 3, 1914. Pittsburg. A fire destroys an orphanage, killing six children and wounding three citizens who tried to save them. The mistresses get out alive. Witnesses say the blaze was so hot that it was impossible to get near it. January 25, 1936. Columbus, Ohio. Another orphanage burnt to the ground, this time after mattresses caught fire. This time the mistresses escaped with minor burns but disappeared after being treated by doctors who’d set up a small emergency clinic in the shoe factory next door. Twelve children died in the fire.”

“And these are all connected.”

“These … and many more,” Briar said in a grim voice. “But here’s the important one: Chicago, Illinois. 1975. Another orphanage fire. All of the children in the orphanage died. The mistresses survived. Investigators tearing away the rubble experienced a cave-in. Two died. More rubble was cleared away. It was discovered—and here I quote the newspaper for posterity—
‘… A vast, complex series of tunnels, most likely used during the twenties by bootleggers.’
End quote.”

“They’re looking for the Juniper Tree,” I said. “They have to be. But why are they using children? And why would the Juniper Tree be buried underground here in the middle of Milwaukee?”

“It gets worse.” Briar tapped on the keyboard with his paw. His ears perked up. “I emailed a handful of geneology experts to see if I could locate what happened to the children in the other orphanages. There is no record of any of them. So I went to the newspaper archives in the library, hoping my assumptions were wrong.”

“The kids were all missing,” I finished. “The ones who survived the fires. Disappeared.”

Briar nodded solemnly. “It was also found that many of the children in these orphanages had been … er,
employed
in various industries while living in the orphanages. This was common back then, of course. Children often worked in mines and garment shops and factories.”

“Gross!”

“Yes.
Gross
.” He scratched his head. “Always creative with your word choice. Did you have any success last night?”

“That and more. But what I need to do now is get to the basement. Something is happening down there. Gawd! Seriously, why do Corrupted love their basements so much?”

“Perhaps they enjoy the nefariously dank smell,” Briar suggested.

I looked at him, unable to contain a chuckle. Pretty soon, we were both laughing.

Chapter 10

In my dream, I found myself once again in the foyer at the stairs. There was a commotion coming from the basement—I could
feel
it the moment I willed my feet to touch the floor. Children crying out. Another loud roar of something inhuman. I had to see what was down there.

I moved closer.

Suddenly, the door to the basement flew open. The same boy—Alex—came rushing out. He ran down the hall, stopping when he saw me. He turned right, slipping into one of the other rooms. I walked through the dimly lit hall, hoping I might be able to will myself to speak aloud. He could see me. If he could see me, he could communicate with me.

From the doorway to the basement came the sweet-sounding voice from the previous night. “Oh, Alex!” she sang, stepping into the hallways and shutting the door behind her. It was the younger mistress all right. She looked left, then right. “Darling, you have so, so much more work left! Children who don’t meet their quota are boiled for stew, don’t forget!”

She turned toward me, but if she could see me she didn’t tip her hand. She walked past me and I turned, watching her walk up the steps. She hummed a high-pitched, pleasant tune, as if she belonged in a musical.

I turned back to the room Alex had slipped into, feeling myself lift off the ground as I became distracted, forgetting about thinking about my feet on the floor. I grabbed the frame of the doorway before I could float back down the hall, then regained my bearings and walked inside.

It was the living room. The one with the old dark drapes and the old couch. There was a bearskin run sitting on the floor in front of the couch—I hadn’t noticed it before but now I found myself stepping sideways to put space between myself and the bear’s terrifying head, frozen in a look of absolute hunger.

The boy was hiding behind the couch, peering around the edge and watching me walk over. In the delicate silence, I could hear the sound of my feet on the hardwood floor, muffled by my socks.

My socks. Last night, I’d taken off my socks before going to sleep. Tonight, I was wearing socks. Whatever ghostly creature I was, I was probably wearing exactly what I wore to bed.

Which meant the ghost standing before Alex was wearing an old teddy bear t-shirt and
Hunger Games
pajama bottoms. Oy. Some savior.

Thankfully, he didn’t look
too
disappointed. He was crouched over, his fingers clutching the couch so tightly his little knuckles had turned white. Above us, the ceiling creaked. A door opened, then slammed shut.

“She’ll come back down,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t fight back. I’m so tired. I think they put something in the porridge.”

Carbs, I thought. They loaded it with carbohydrates so the kids got a quick sugar rush. Then the rush wears off and they crash and go to bed. They start it all over again the next day. No protein or fat in their diets would make them groggy and unable to gain much strength to fight back.

Thank you, health class.

“Are you a ghost?”

I shook my head. I tried to talk again, but my voice was silent.

“Here,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his overalls. He pulled out a small chunk of coal. “Can you grab this?”

I could try. I reached out, but nothing happened.

Think
about grabbing it, Alice!

I reached out again, imagining my invisible hand grabbing the coal. It floated in mid-air; the boy smiled.

“Cool.”

I moved the coal to the floor, writing a simple message:

What’s in the basement?

The boy nodded, understanding. “They have us digging for something. Well, they have us and something else digging for something. Some of us sew clothes, too, and the mistresses sell the clothes for money to keep buying more coal. Some of us have to keep the furnaces going. It’s really hot.”

“Why?” I wrote.

The boy shrugged. “Because the creature likes it hot.” He swallowed, taking a shaky breath. “The younger one is named Marleen.”

Marleen! Of course. It made sense: Marleen was the daughter in “The Juniper Tree.”

The sound of heavy shoes pounding on the stairs caused us both to flinch. I dropped the coal. The boy quickly used his hand to wipe away the words, putting the lump of coal back in his pocket.

“Will you save us?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Are you going to do it wearing pajamas?”

I smiled and shook my head.

A look of relief spread across his little face. “The creature …” he started to say, but then his big doe eyes glanced over the couch and a look of terror spread across his face. A pair of long, slender hands reached over and grabbed him by his overalls, pulling him over the couch.

“Come along now, my little darling,” said the sweet-sounding Marleen, tucking him under her arm as if he was a football. I tried to follow and felt my feet lift off the ground. I reached out, trying to grab Alex’s hand. But I was floating now, unable to control myself.

“Let go!” Alex shouted, pounding on her back.

Marleen laughed. “Such a strong little boy! Why, two extra hours shoveling coal will be a walk in the park! And if you collapse, all the better! I’m starving and I haven’t had a good leg of child in
years
.”

The boy screamed louder. I was falling behind, trailing them in the dim hallway.

“Oh, hush,” said Marleen. “I would never, never do such a thing to you. You remind me too much of my dear brother. It was all my fault, you know. I killed him. From that moment on, it was only a matter of time before Death returned to claim him.” She stifled a sob, reaching for the heavy door near the kitchen. “Oh my dear, dear brother. The guilt tears at me so. I fear it will consume me if we don’t find him again!”

I planted my invisible feet on the carpet and stepped quickly, losing my footing again and again. By the time I reached the door to the basement, it was already shut.

And locked.

“But I’m a ghost,” I said in a mute voice. I thought about moving
through
the door, closing my eyes as I drifted closer. When I opened them again, I found myself in a dark staircase leading down.

Behind me, the door was still shut.

From farther below came the unmistakable sound of Alex’s cries. I willed my feet to touch the steps and take them two at a time, down one landing and then another, where the wooden steps gave way to stones and the wooden walls of the staircase turned to rock. There was no basement, only another winding staircase leading deeper. The air cooled. The noxious scent of burning coal entered my nostrils.

Alex screamed again. I fought to catch up, tripping on the stone steps in the near-darkness. The only sources of light were three small lanterns hanging from the stone walls, and as I passed the last one I found myself surrounded by darkness, carefully plotting my footsteps on the wet stone floor as my invisible fingers followed the rocky wall. I turned right and suddenly, there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Literally.

I gasped. It was a cavern. A massive cavern with massive iron furnaces on either side with long exhaust pipes crawling up the walls and disappearing into the rocky ceiling. Children lurched from massive piles of black stuff over to the furnaces with heavy shovels full of coal. With every fresh load of coal, the fires inside each furnace belched in satisfaction. The wet rock walls glistened in the firelight.

More kids sat at tables spread out near the entrance to the tunnel, hunched over stacks of jeans, sewing as furiously as their little fingers would allow. Boys, girls, all of them incredibly young, all of them dirty and disheveled and tired-looking. Their eyes blinked furiously in the hot, dry air. On every pair of jeans was a gold “B.”

“Faster now!” said the older Corrupted woman with the gray hair. She was walking between the rows of tables. “Jeans mean money. And money means coal.”

But for what? I thought. Was it to build the furnaces? How long had it taken to build each one? Why were there so few farther down the cavern?

Five of the boys farther down the cavern, tossing another load of coal into the hot furnaces, and the entire cavern brightened.

There, on the other end of the cavern: a lizard. A massive lizard the size of a truck, clawing madly at the walls, tearing away chunks of rock.

I gasped.

The lizard turned, causing the kids to drop their shovels and run back toward the tables. The lizard had bright brown and black spots, like someone had splattered it with paint. It had a fat tail and a wide, spade-shaped head. Its long red tongue jutted out, tasting the air. One of its black eyelids blinked. More shovels full of coal fed the furnaces along the walls and in the brief moment when the fires grew brighter, I could see the creature’s pupil plain as day. A terrible realization crept over me.

It could see me.