Content warnings: harm to children and animals, death
Once upon a time, there lived a little
family in a cottage in the woods. A mother and a father and their two little children,
Hans and Gretchen. They didn't have much, but they had each other and a lock on
the door to keep the monsters away. The family lived simply and safely for many
years and everyone lived happily ever after.
That's the bedtime story I wish I could
tell my children. But the truth is that fairy tales are never safe from
monsters. And real life is even worse. We did live in a cottage with a dark and
ancient forest sprawling behind us. We also lived in the shadow of the
crematorium where I made my living. The scent of the smoke lingered in the air
always, something you never get used to. Our cottage was far from town, nearly twenty
miles by winding dirt road. Frequented mostly by the hearses carrying the dead
to our doorstep.
In my more poignant moods I consider myself
a sort of ferryman (or woman, rather) for the dead, an honorable job. In my
more practical moods, I know I'm simply making my living off the dead. The only
job I ever turned down, the only time death was too much, was when it was my
own husband. He died on the steps of the crematorium, a freak accident, while I
was out shopping for milk. Irony to die at a crematorium only to have to travel
to a distant funeral home after death.
When I returned home that awful day, I
found Gretchen, only a toddler at the time, sobbing in the dirt of the driveway.
I found my son, Hans, sitting next to his father's body, quiet and unmoving. A
silent sentinel.
"He was trying to find his phone to
call for help." Hans said quietly to me. I never did find his phone. My
husband was allergic to peanuts. We didn't keep any in the house, save for
Gretchen's favorite snacks, peanut butter puffs. I still don't know how he
accidentally ingested any, but somehow that's what killed him. After all that's
happened, I wonder if it was as simple as my child's messy hands brushing his
lips, or a puff accidentally dropped in a coffee cup melting away before my
husband could notice. I worry the truth is more sinister than that.
Something is wrong with Gretchen. She's six
now and knows no life other than our quiet existence in the woods. She practices
her letters in a tiny broom cupboard turned schoolroom while I monitor the
ovens in the office next door. Hans finishes his schoolwork first, always. He’s
studious and clever. Then he sits with Gretchen, quietly whispering and
tutoring her. I depend on him too much. It's so hard not to with his calm and
patient demeanor. Gretchen is all raging wildfire and dangerous wind where her
brother is a calming tranquil beach on a sunny day. She may only be six, but I
worry about her lack of self control and wild, fickle emotions. Maybe something
inside her broke that day she watched her father die and was left to wait for
me in the cold.
Hans disappears into his room at 8 pm
sharp, every evening. A goodnight hug and kiss, a book in tow, and he's set for
the night. I won't see him until the next morning promptly at 8 am. Gretchen
wages war against the dark. Tears away at my sanity with hourly wake-ups and constant
demands.
"Can I sleep with the light on,
mommy?"
"I don't want to be alone."
"Can I leave the door open?"
The questions and requests always start
innocuously enough at the beginning of the night. Past midnight, they turn
darker and more sinister.
"The monster is whispering to me again
and telling me bad things."
"I was afraid to get up and I peed my
bed."
"I think someone is watching me."
Recently, I woke up in the hours just
before dawn with Gretchen standing over me, barefoot and wide eyed and stone
silent. I startle and stifle a yell.
Gretchen leans close to my face then,
"Are you a witch, Mommy? The voices said you're a witch and you'll cook us
in your ovens and eat us when we grow big enough."
The shock keeps me from answering her.
"Can I get in your bed, Mommy?"
she whispers, suddenly sounding scared and meek.
I convince her to go back to bed instead. I
hate that I can’t stand the thought of her little body worming close to mine
under the covers.
Hans finds me the next morning.
"Mama," his little voice is hesitant
and low, as if he's afraid of being overheard. We both dart a covert glance
towards the open door where Gretchen is playing with her dolls in her bedroom.
"Gretchen said if I tell you what she did to Goldfish, she'll push me in
the ovens with the dead people."
My blood runs cold. Goldfish was a gift for
Gretchen's last birthday. She desperately wanted a pet, but I was too tired for
anything that required much care. So we got Goldfish, named with all the
creativity of a 6-year-old entering her literal phase. Goldfish had a habit of
leaping from his tank if you forgot to put the lid on. And he lived in a tank
in the bathroom on the sink next to the toilet. I had assumed it had been the
worst kind of accident. A badly aimed jump and a swim to an untimely toilet burial.
"It's ok, Hans, nothing will happen to
you if you tell. I promise I'll keep it secret," I reassure him. "Your
sister would never push you into the ovens." It's the first time I start
to doubt that sentiment.
Hans hesitates and we listen, both of us
quiet as we hear Gretchen in the other room, "Bad, bad, Dolly. You
shouldn't have done that. Now I'm going to chop your face with a knife into
little pieces and feed you to the witch in the forest." She’s made her
voice low and raspy, the voice she uses when she describes the things the
monster tells her.
"Mama," Hans says then, "She
ate him. She ate Goldfish."
I turn to stare at him, uncomprehending.
"She put him in the smoothie blender
when you weren't looking." Hans continues in an urgent voice.
I'm going to be sick.
“She fed him to you too,” Hans confirms
with wide eyes.
I make smoothies for Gretchen and me to
share every morning. I used to make them for all three of us, but- and I
realize this with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, Hans abruptly
refused to drink any more smoothies starting sometime last month.
Gretchen only gets worse from there.
Hans grows dark bags under his eyes,
looking much older and more worried than he should be at ten. He confesses he
can hear Gretchen talking to herself at all hours of the night, loud enough to
carry through the wall into his room. Gretchen's stories become darker and
darker. She's fixated on the crematorium’s ovens. She spouts nonsense about
witches in the woods. I have to reinstall the baby gates to keep her from
wandering off into the woods at night. Even after the baby gates, she gets all
the way to the edge of the forest one night before I catch up with her and stop
her.
"No, mommy," she groans, fighting
me with single-minded intensity to walk into the dark. "I need to get to
the witch's cottage before you die like daddy. The monster killed him, and it
will kill you too, unless I find the witch to stop it."
I've tried to help her and keep everyone safe,
but I can't do it anymore. It's the last straw. I've called for help, a doctor,
to come out tomorrow morning. Hans overheard me on the phone and he looked so
broken it nearly killed me.
"Is Gretchen going away, Mama?" He
asks me.
I tell him that yes, someone is coming to
take Gretchen some place where she can get better.
He nods, but then his eyes darken and he
says, "I think that Gretchen's monster might not be the kind you can
fix."
Don’t I know it, baby. But all we can do is
try.
I pour myself a glass of wine and let the
night fade away from me. When I wake, it's only because of the slamming of the
door. I'm startled to realize I'm still in the living room. I never made it to
bed. The empty wineglass has fallen from my hand and shattered on the floor. A kaleidoscope
of shimmering fragments reflects the light of the TV I’ve left on. A background
noise of mundane late night cable programming filters through my ears without
making sense. I'm groggy, my eyes can't focus. I try to stand and find my legs
are too weak.
"Hi mommy." Says a little voice.
I can’t understand. It’s not the voice I
expect to hear. The figure walking through the front door isn't the one I would
guess I’d see returning from the forest late at night.
"Hans? Why were you outside? Where's
your sister?" My voice is slurred, far more than one glass of wine should
make it.
"She's out in the woods, looking for
the witch." And he laughs a laugh that I haven’t heard from him in ages.
Light and happy. Carefree.
"She won't find her way back. She even
thought to leave a trail of marbles. Like Hansel and Gretel." He opens his
hands then and marbles fall from his fingertips. Clattering and rolling into
the far corners of the room.
He cocks his head at me like I'm a curious bug
he's observing, as he rips its legs off one by one.
"You're dying slower than dad did. You
aren't allergic to anything, which made it harder, but I put a lot of medicine
in your wine."
My last coherent thoughts are of my
daughter. Gretchen. My poor baby. I see her clearly finally. Listening to the
monster in the next bedroom over, whispering to her in the night. The raspy
voice I now recognize as my son’s whisper. Watching, too young to speak, as the
monster slipped some of her snack into her father's drink. Desperately
searching the woods for someone to help her family, a magic witch to cure
everything with a spell. Unable to find her way back home after the monster
took away her bread crumbs. It's January, and it's too cold for her to last the
night. My life fades away in the warmth of the little cottage in the shadow of
the crematorium as my daughter lies somewhere in the dark woods, her life
fading away into the snow. And the last thing I see is the monster behind my
son's eyes.
Hans is ready the next day when the doctor
comes. He's had time to work himself into a hysteria of tears and panic. He
doesn't know where his sister went. She ran away after she put something in her
mom's drink. No, he doesn't know what it was. He thought medicine helped people,
so he didn’t say anything to his mom. He couldn't wake her up all night. He
wanted to call for help, but someone smashed his mom’s phone. Maybe his sister
did that before she left. They don't find Gretchen’s body until spring when the
snow thaws.
Hans hates his new family, the one the
social worker left him with. He has two brothers now. One almost as old as his
sister was. And a new one that's just a baby. He hates that one especially. All
it does is cry and smell and take up all the attention. Hans has always wished
he could be an only child. So he bides his time, whispers to his new brother,
the one big enough to understand but just as stupid as his sister was. He
remembers the fairy tales his mother used to read him at bedtime. Have you
heard about changelings? Hans tells the boy all he knows. They're fairies that
replace babies. They are bad creatures, that's why this baby cries so much.
This baby is a bad fairy creature, not a human. It isn't really your brother.
Your true brother is lost in the magic realm. But you can save him. Remember
how your mom made your birthday cake last month? She put it in the oven as
batter and it came out as another thing, a tasty cake. Magic. Remember, they
used to talk about a bun in the oven all the time before your brother was born.
If you put the changeling in the oven and wait, he'll come out as something different.
Something better. Wait until midnight, the magic hour when everything is
possible to do it. Don’t tell your parents. They won’t believe in the magic and
then you’ll be stuck with this monster the rest of your life. By morning, it
will be finished. Your brother will come back.
Hans watches the clock turn to midnight and
smiles as he hears the boy sneak out of bed.
