Page 28 of Hansel and Gerhardt (The GriMM Tales #3)

Enveloped by Evil

I t felt like hours Herr Candy sat there waffling about nothing at all, pushing one dessert then another on Gerhardt, all while Gerhardt listened in that half-attentive, half-dreaming way. Hansel wondered if he heard any of it. He wondered if Herr Candy cared whether he heard it or not.

He still couldn’t discern the man’s game. Why do any of it? The man had everything he needed. He could conjure food. He had a large and beautiful house. Why do this to Gerhardt? And why, all night, had he been so insistent Hansel should join them?

Hansel had stopped arguing long ago. He’d stopped replying altogether. But when they finally made their way upstairs, Hansel stuck close.

Herr Candy walked Gerhardt directly to his room and held the door open for him. For a moment, it looked as though he were inclined to follow Gerhardt in.

Despite whatever the risk may have been to himself, Hansel stepped forward. He reached past him and pulled the door closed without so much as a look at Gerhardt.

Herr Candy’s body slackened, from that of an elegant dinner host, to that of a fiend. “Sleep tight, Gerhardt,” he called through the door. He spared Hansel one long and menacing stare, then sauntered up the long hall to his own room. The door snapped shut with a jarring thump.

Hansel waited there, catching his breath. He felt strangely guilty, as though he’d done something wrong, or was about to.

He tried Gerhardt’s door.

Locked.

He tapped softly. “Gerhardt? Gerhardt, will you let me in?”

“Go away,” came the muffled reply. “I want nothing to do with you. Not ever again.”

Hansel refused to believe he meant it. Not after the way he’d grasped his hand earlier that night.

“Please.” Hansel’s hand ran down the flaking chocolate door, a shower of chocolate crumbs landing at his feet. “Please. I just want to talk to you.”

No sound came back. Nothing.

Could he break it down after all? What magic held it in place? He tried the handle again, believing it should easily rip free from such delicate chocolate. But it didn’t budge. And when he shoved the door, the enchanted chocolate held strong.

And so it remained for hours.

Hansel retreated to his room, but only to the doorway. There he sat, his head leaning against the doorframe, his eyes on Gerhardt’s door.

His empty stomach felt like a ball of razor blades, twisting in on itself. His hands shook uncontrollably. He felt like being sick, though there was nothing to throw up. And he was terrified. Terrified . But not for himself.

He knew something awful was coming for Gerhardt. Something . But what?

Icy cold air slipped over him as all the fires in the house went out one by one. Darkness and cold, and he began to rock, trying to stay warm, trying to stay awake.

‘ When I look at you, he’s all I see.’

The cruelty of Gerhardt’s eyes, in such contrast to the warmth by the stream.

Gerhardt in the sunshine.

Gerhardt, who he was falling in love with.

It hurt to admit it. To know it. But those last few days threw their entire relationship into a new light.

That the Gerhardt of the forest had been there all along.

That the heart, so sweet and pure, was so close the whole time.

All the beautiful things he’d said to him.

And that precious heart, beating under someone’s thumb all his life.

‘ I did what I had to do. Just as I’ve always done.’

“No.” The word, spoken out loud into the quiet of the house, shocked Hansel, and he wrapped his arms a little tighter around himself.

He knew what he’d seen. He knew that kiss. That last kiss in the forest, after the tree attacked them, after he’d saved him. He knew that embrace.

Perhaps it was because he’d so rarely experienced it, but he knew love when he felt it.

He was back on his feet, his legs weak and shaky after hours of sitting on the frigid floor. Back at Gerhardt’s door, a hand pressed against it. He whispered, “Are you awake too? Do you hear me, my love?”

More unendurable silence. He tried the handle again, clacking it this way and that pointlessly.

“Gerhardt? Please wake up. Please listen…” He dipped his forehead against the door, speaking low.

“I’m sorry. I thought… in the forest… I thought we’d talked it through.

But I know there’s too much. I know there’s more than we’ll ever be able to talk through.

I know it will hang between us. Maybe forever.

But when you said those things tonight…” He took a deep breath, his voice weakening.

“Please tell me you didn’t mean them. Please tell me I never scared you.

Gerhardt…” His fingers slid down the rough door, then scrunched into a tight fist. Exhaustion crumpled his shoulders, grief filled his eyes.

“Please tell me you know I’m not like that.

You’re everything to me. I would never do that. Please come out.”

Only the stark emptiness of the night was available to fill his ears with a silence so profound it hurt.

His chest ached as if there were a hole right where his heart should have been.

Yet it beat. It beat on, long and strong.

His whole life had been loss and sadness, certainty that there was no end to it, could be no end to it.

That pain was the essence of his existence.

But now he’d escaped his father, only to replace all that fear, all that pain, with a new hurt.

But why did this one feel good? Why, behind all the anxiety and agony, did it feel like something good belied it?

As though just on the other side of that door was the sun itself, shining bright, waiting to warm him through, like Gerhardt’s smile on the one sunny morning they’d shared. If only he could get to him.

He beat the open palm of his hand on Gerhardt’s door a little louder, desperate to wake him, but not Herr Candy. To escape with Gerhardt into the night, to be gone. To find that tower, and the river in the sun, and their salvation.

His head bowed low, and he began to gather strength, what little was left in him. He would ram that door. He’d get it open, grab Gerhardt, and run. If it were humanly possible to defeat the magic with brute force, he would do it.

But then a sound caught his attention. A sound off to his left, down the far end of the hall in the gloomy dark. A sliding sound, like someone shifting their hand along the wall, only wetter.

Heart thundering, Hansel turned to face it.

He must have woken Herr Candy. And what would he do now?

But whatever emerged from that doorway was ten thousand times worse than whatever he’d expected.

In the disparate light, long black claws revealed themselves, high up the wall. They stretched into sight, five of them, then curled, clinging to the doorframe.

Some incessant tingling in the mad part of Hansel’s brain recognised with horror that the hand was upside down.

The revelation came as nothing more than the pulse of terror in his veins, too eerie, too uncanny to be consciously understood. For there quickly followed another hand, or claw, higher up the doorframe. Then a third, then a fourth, clasping the header of the door.

Then the tongue came.

It licked long and black, heinous and forked, trembling on the air like an adder’s, only for far too long, glistening in the meagre glow of the moon.

Like a whip, it retracted back around the doorway.

Hansel pressed his back to Gerhardt’s door, his hand pale and still as marble on the handle, frightened to the spot.

One of the thing’s claws searched, feeling for purchase.

It stabbed its sharp fingertips deep into the wall.

The arm of the creature, lone, lean, weaving, winding black sinew, bulging with every movement, led the way to reveal a sharp backwards elbow.

Something of a forearm followed close, the vision of it obliterated by the vile face that slopped around the corner.

Round, inky, a dozen eyes or more writhing in the mess of slick skin, bubbling in and out, but with every pupil focused on Hansel.

The mouth, for the dark gash in the visage could only be that, stretched to reveal a darkness that was blacker than black, and the thick blob of tongue pushed to the front, uncurling like a roll of… candy.

Hansel’s hand fell frantically on the door behind him, his other wrenching the door handle.

“Let me in! Gerhardt!” But he kept his eyes on the thing as the next claw struck into the wall, as the beast revealed itself in full, horror by horror, mounting the ceiling upside down, the head turning in a complete circle to keep those many eyes on Hansel, that ever-licking tongue thrusting forward hungrily.

There were the stairs, just next to Hansel, and it was a fast trip down and out into the forest night, away from all of this.

But dear, lovely Gerhardt, asleep in his bed.

Hansel would die first.

“You can’t have him!” Hansel shouted, turning to face the animal. “I won’t let you.” But what was he to do? There in the empty hall, in this cursed candy house, he was one man with no weapons, dwarfed by this unholy being, that crept closer and closer again.

Hansel balled his hands into fists. They were all he had.

The tongue lashed out too fast for him to block it. It struck him on the cheek. He felt it slice through his skin, felt the gash open, felt the blood on his cheek, hot.

The tongue pulled back, the taste of his blood in its mouth now. And it smiled. That smile he recognised even on that new and foul face. A smile that pulled back over sharp and silver fangs that dripped with saliva, thrilled by the flavour of him.

A maddening clicking sound came from the gullet of the thing. Was it a laugh? Then it sped forward, carried at an unholy speed by those too-long legs, catapulting its disgusting body towards Hansel, who stood his ground by Gerhardt’s door, protecting him as best he could, even to the last.

The tongue lashed out with fatal intent, and Hansel was knocked to the ground.