Fairly Wicked Tales (7 page)

“You saw me then, before the great cask. Wordlessly, I came to you, and bade you drop your weapon.”

The axe struck the ground. Armin found himself unable to turn away from Viveka’s sharp eyes. His fingers trembled on her shoulders.

“The time was at hand to show you pleasure.”

Viveka pressed herself against his chest and buried her face. He pulled her head back, and she tore the collar of her dress, baring one milk-smooth breast. Armin stared for an endless moment …

… then buried his teeth in her.

“And pleasure you took.”

He lost the ability to make sense of his vision after that, as it flew apart into blood and flesh and screams. Eb collapsed by the doorway, while Otto tore bloody strips from an unidentifiable part of Heidi. The parrot spoke a low, maddening chant that didn’t end even as Armin’s foot kicked down its cage.

“So good,” he murmured over and over, as he ripped more from Viveka’s breast. The wound, to his amazement, closed and sealed after every tear.

“Do your will,” she commanded.

She dissolved from his eyes as he kissed her bloody lips, consumed by a sea of crimson light.

“But sweetheart,” said Viveka, from within the light, “the dream is not ended.”

Her face loomed before him again, and Armin realized it was the Viveka of now. He was seated at their table, with her father, his best man, and the majority of Resau surrounding them.

He still could neither move nor speak.

She brought his hand to her chest—to the exact place he had torn flesh from her in his vision.

Beneath her dress, he felt the depression of a wound—not as deep as he had imagined, but nonetheless real. He started to shake.

“You have a choice to make,” said Viveka. “You see those around us?”

Armin looked about, only moving his eyes. He struggled to do even that, so intense was her gaze. In those fragmented glances, the villagers stared, slack-jawed and silent, entranced themselves. The beer in their mugs was forgotten, along with their plates of meat and bread.

“When I tell you the dream is not ended,” she said, “I talk of
their
dream. In it, I have come to visit you for the first time, as I described at the start. I met Grete, and she warned me of the terrible band of robbers and cannibals who held her prisoner. We watched, horrified, as you cut up poor Heidi and ate her. All except for her finger … and her ring.”

Viveka opened her left hand, revealing a slender severed finger. Heidi’s ring, though tarnished and stained with blood, was unmistakable.

“If you agree to become as I am,” Viveka went on, “they will not remember the story I compelled them to hear. You will later undergo a ritual, in which you will become as my father and I are. Long life and ease of healing will be yours. The ability to mesmerize and compel will be yours.” She gave him a light kiss. “
I
… will be yours.”

She turned the finger idly over in her hand.

“If you do not agree … you know what will happen.”

Armin knew. He would be tried and executed with haste.

“I wish I could compel you,” she told him, “as I did last night. However, to become what my father and I are … you must choose of your own volition. That is how it works.”

She spoke truth, Armin realized. Otherwise, she would not have worked such an elaborate trick to bring him to this point. He could not guess if she had set up his fateful night with Heidi, or if she had been at his house with another plan in mind, and had simply taken advantage of circumstances. Not that it mattered. She had laid the choice before him, after weighting consequences in her favor.

“Sweetheart, the dream is almost over,” she whispered. “Choose.”

Staring into her eyes, Armin thought about his death. He thought of his neck snapping on the gallows. He tried to picture heaven, though it was hard with Viveka filling his sight. He tried to think of hell, and had the same problem.

He thought of how easy tearing Heidi apart had been. He thought of her flavor, raw and later cooked. He thought of the taste of his bride, still in his mouth that morning.

Considered so, he had no choice at all.

The dream ended.

***

He knew he was back in his house the moment he opened his eyes. He recognized the pattern of the thatch above him. At his left was his front door, now repaired and bolted, along with new wood shutters over the windows. At his right …

“There you are,” said Grete, as she stirred the kettle. “Thought you’d sleep all night.”

Armin tried to move, and realized two things. One, he was tied to a table, his wrists, ankles, neck, and waist firmly held still. Two, he was naked.

“Grete …” he said, and found his voice weak and thin. “What … what has been done … ”

The crone ignored him, and continued tending the kettle. Armin realized she was still entranced, as he had been. Close by, in the repaired cage, Judda the parrot watched them both.

“So good, so good, thou handsome groom,” Judda softly called, “your will is done, now sealed your doom.”

The bird met his horrified stare, as if in challenge, and then looked up. Armin realized there was someone else in the room.

“Well, then,” said a rough voice, “maybe parrots
are
capable of prophecy—at least, as Grete defines it. Viveka only had to say that once.”

Brandt leaned into Armin’s field of vision. His grin betrayed hunger.

“You and your crew were tried and hanged,” he said. “At least, Resau will remember it as such, should they ever wonder about you at all.”

The miller appeared briefly sad.

“How were we so wrong about you, Armin?” he asked.

Armin didn’t know how to answer him. All he knew was, on the cusp of the choice, he could not say yes to Viveka. No matter his gain, or what it would cost him to turn it down.

“She … left her taste in my mouth,” he finally rasped. “I liked it… and hated that I liked it.” It was all the explanation he had.

Brandt said nothing to this. He glanced up as the door opened.

“Here we are,” said Viveka. “Softly, now. I know you’re hungry …”

Young Otto was with her. He was shirtless, his black hair disheveled, and his brown eyes wide. An axe was in his hand, blade raised.

“Hello, my love,” said Viveka. “I assume father has already told you about how you, Eberhard, and Otto died.”

“What have you done with Otto?” Armin asked, his eyes never leaving the axe blade. Otto hefted it and grinned.

“After we finished last night,” said Viveka, “while you and Eberhard slept and Grete removed most of what remained of Heidi, I drew young Otto down to your cellar, bound him, and left Grete with orders to keep him concealed.”

She joined Brandt and Otto at the table. Though her features didn’t change, she somehow seemed older to Armin, as if the mask of a girl was only something she wore for the sake of keeping the outside world unaware.

“He was to be my father’s last meal,” she went on. “The following night, in the ritual, you would in turn have eaten my father and fully become our kind. We would then have left Resau and taken up our lives in a new place, where our faces were not known.”

Armin looked wildly up at Brandt, who did not seem the least bit disturbed by the news of his imminent death.

“You are … witches?” he asked.

Brandt laughed. Viveka gave him a sad shake of her head.

“We’re the descendants,” said Brandt, “of ones who, long ago, sought immortality through sorcery. Through rough magic and iron will, they found a form of it. Those too greedy for life never passed it on, and learned even their longevity had limits. As with all life, we can only aspire to immortality through what we pass on to our heirs—quite truly in our cases.”

“When my mother reached the end of her far-lengthened span,” said Viveka, as she leaned close, “father fed her to me in the ceremony. I took her memories, her abilities … and her hunger. Since my father had no male children, and I was unlikely to have any before his passing, I needed to recruit one amenable to the change. Hence, you, or so we thought. Hence now Otto.”

Otto snarled and raised his axe.

“Don’t!” Armin exclaimed. “It’s me, Armin!”

“He can’t hear you,” said Brandt. “He is too hungry.”

“He, too, is close to being our kind,” Viveka told him. “Not my first choice, but …” She considered Otto. “He’s quite the impressionable lad. I think, when the time comes, he won’t say no.”

She kissed Armin. He did not need to be told it was the goodbye kind.

Unlike the dream, the nightmare was slow to end. As the axe blade came down, and as knives cut and teeth ripped, Armin’s screams were the last of him to go.

About the Author

Gary W. Olson
sightings have been reported in Michigan since 1969, though few scientists give serious credence to his existence. The only claimed video footage of him, in which he emerged from the woods and made weird hooting noises while waving a copy of his debut dark fantasy novel,
Brutal Light
, has been thoroughly debunked. Some researchers claim to have extracted his DNA from copies (licked by Gary) of the dark fiction anthology,
Fading Light
, to which he reputedly was a contributor, though this has also been dismissed as a hoax. There are some who claim that Gary is not a mythological deep forest creature, and that he works as a programmer for an insurance company by day while writing weird dark fantasy, horror, and science fiction tales by night. Their chief evidence is his website and blog, which is at www.garywolson.com, and his supposed ravings on Twitter as @gwox. One day, hopefully in a lucrative special for the SyFy Channel, the question of what manner of creature he is can be settled.

Crumbs

A retelling of “The Crumbs on the Table”

Adam Millard

“I’m going into the village now,” the lady said. “I shall be gone for some time, as I expect to pay a visit to some friends while I’m out.”

The countryman nodded. “Shall I have tea ready for when you return?” He understood she would reject his offer, for he couldn’t cook if his life depended upon it. Still, offering did no harm. She was a gnarly old bag, but she was his wife. A good husband always endeavors to help, if only to placate the witch he’s wedded to in exchange for a moment’s peace.

“No need,” she said. “I’ll most likely eat supper with a friend. There’s bread in the cupboard if you get hungry, and if I know you as well as I think I do, you’ll be bleedin’ ravenous by noon.”

She was right; his stomach already rumbled.

“Dare I ask which friend you are visiting?” the countryman said. As soon as the question passed his lips he regretted it. Exactly the kind of verbal diarrhoea he tried to avoid, for it often meant a night in the barn with only the pigs and chickens for company.

Though, some days, banishment meant a welcome break from her incessant malcontent. She had a way with words, though most of them he didn’t understand. In fact, he was pretty sure the majority of the names that fell from her puckered lips were illegal across most of the country.

Her eyes widened. The countryman realized he’d made an error he wouldn’t hear the end of for some time. “That’s very scurrilous of you, husband. What do you think I’m up to? You think I’m having it away with somebody behind your back?”

The thought had never crossed his mind. He didn’t know anyone willing to take her off his hands, at least not for free.

“I shall be back some time before dark. And if I find out those mangy puppies have been in my parlor, I’ll no doubt throw a right fit.”

In the corner of the room, the puppies winced. Even
they
knew better than to mess with the mistress of the house. On the odd occasion the countryman spoke out of turn, they could be found hiding beneath the dirty—and often damp—sheet they had been afforded. The mere sound of her shrill voice caused the fur to rise on their flesh, leaving them resembling a litter of hedgehogs rather than dogs. Neither the mistress nor the countryman claimed them as their own; the poor creatures the canine equivalent of a ginger middle child.

“Don’t worry,” the countryman said. “The puppies will be outside when you return. All three of them.”

“Well, make sure they are. I’ll probably want to go straight to bed, and the last thing I want to be doing is chasing a trio of mongrels around the house.”

This, the puppies thought, was not quite fair. They belonged to a single breed. The mistress was simply angry her own origins were indeterminate.

“Okay, so I shall come and see you out?” the countryman said, trying not to sound excited at the prospect of a few hours’ peace. He could do
anything
while she was gone. There was a deck of cards with his name on, and a flagon of wine in the larder, enough to render him sufficiently senseless to pretend he loved her when she returned. With the wine in him, he might be befuddled enough to try his luck, and if she wasn’t in the mood, at least he wouldn’t feel the punch until morning.

He followed her to the door, where they said their goodbyes. From the kitchen, the puppies listened intently.

“Do you think she’s getting some
how’s your father
behind the countryman’s back?” one of the puppies asked. He was the darkest of the three, with tan spots. If the owners cared enough to name it, it would have been something like Dusty, or
Bandit
.

“Are you serious?” another said. “I understand the priest at St. Martin’s refers to her as a troglodyte.”

“He’s right,” said the third and final puppy. “Got a face like a smashed crab, that one. You think it’s a coincidence whenever she’s around I have trouble with my gag reflex?”

“Fur-ball?” would-be-Bandit asked.

“You do realize I’m not a cat, don’t you?” Three replied.

Suddenly, the front door slammed and the countryman returned to the kitchen. The puppies looked up at him, as if butter wouldn’t melt. “You’d better not be talking about me,” he said.

“What would we ever say about you?” One said. “It’s that bush-pig of a wife of yours we’ve got a problem with.” Though, what the countryman heard was:
Yip, yap, yap, grrrrr, snerfff.