Little Red Cinderella and the Three Beanstalks

There were so many of the animals that once they rushed forward, we were so completely surrounded that we could hardly move. Some of them leapt into the vast fireplace and began pulling it apart, using their paws and claws to rip away the logs and ashes to smother the flames. Others came at us, all teeth and claws, creating a hellish din of horrible cries that sometimes sounded like the screeches of wild animals, and sometimes like human speech.

Ezu and I wasted no time in fighting back, hacking away at the creatures with sword and poker. Blood and fur flew everywhere, and yowls of rage turned into ones of fear and pain. They outnumbered us a hundred to one, but the room had become so packed full that they could hardly move, and our fighting back had taken them by surprise. The mass of fur tried to recoil from our weapons but those closest to us had nowhere to escape to, not with a hundred more cats and dogs at their backs, pushing them into Ezu and me.

As for the two of us, we hardly had time to even feel afraid. It was all so sudden that instincts kicked in before fear could, and there was only time to think about where to slash my sword next, not even a moment to consider what would happen if I was too slow.

The fight only lasted a few minutes.

Once word got around that Ezu and I were armed and prepared to take as many of the furry bastards down with us as possible, they began to surge away from us, out the front door and through the windows. Those who weren’t killed outright fled, and before we had time to realize what was happening we found ourselves alone once more in the great, empty hall.

Wind from the storm howled through the open windows and door, rain dripping onto the cold marble floors. Our horses were huddled together against the wall behind us, quivering and terrified. A few cats and dogs lay dead at their hooves, victims to the kicks and stomps of panicked hooves. Ezu and I stood panting back to back, our weapons still tentatively raised.

“What,” Ezu gasped, letting the poker fall at his side, “was that?”

“That,” I said grimly, wiping the blood from my sword on a furry body at my feet, “was what you get when you decide to stay in the first abandoned house you find in the middle of the scary woods at night during a storm.”

We started dragging the creatures we’d slain out of the house, but at exactly one hour after they had first appeared, all of the bodies abruptly turned to dust and ash, crumbling away into fine powder in our hands, and those already outside turning into grey sludge as the piles of dust were pelted by rain.

The storm still raged on, fiercer than ever, and we could hardly see an inch in front of our own noses through the sheets of rain and the pitch black. We debated sleeping outside on the porch rather than in the house, but the creatures that had attacked us had been perfectly able to flee out the doors and windows into the forest beyond, so there was no reason to think that the haunting, or whatever it was, was confined solely within the walls of the manor. We eventually decided it was better to be haunted and warm and dry, than haunted and cold and wet.

Ezu and I rock-paper-scissors’ed for who would take first watch, but in the end it didn’t matter who won. We were both still on high alert, exhausted but unable to sleep, jumping at every little sound. As a result, we eventually both ended up nodding off in utter exhaustion about an hour later, without even realizing it.

A noise woke the both of us up an indeterminable amount of time later, though what the noise had been neither I nor Ezu could have told you. All we knew was that we were suddenly awake, hearts pounding, ears pricked for whatever it was that had roused us.

We could hear the wind howling outside the broken windows, the trees creaking in the gale; the occasional rumble of thunder that shook our bones.

And then there it was again: something that wasn’t the sounds of the storm outside, or our labored breathing. A thumping sound, from somewhere… above us? And then something low and drawn out, so faint I couldn’t even be sure if I had really heard it. A groan.

Ezu and I listened intently without moving, both aware that the other was awake, keeping one eye on our horses in case the bolted again. The fire was burning low, emitting a dull red glow from dying embers.

There was a definite sound of movement now, accompanied by moans and groans that were growing in volume with every passing moment. We realized with sudden confused fear that the sounds were coming from the chimney. Something was coming down it, working its way down the length of the chimney, accompanied by bumping, scratching sounds. A long, drawn out moan seeped through the chimney opening, growing ever louder as the thing slithered its way out, until its pitch reached a shrill, horrible scream and with a thump that sent a cloud of grey soot and ash into the air, the bottom half of a man fell into the still glowing embers of the fire.

I screamed and Ezu swore, the both of us scrambling away from the mutilated corpse—or rather, half a corpse, I guess.

The legs twitched and writhed, until they could find purchase in the sooty hearth. With an effort, the hips sort of rolled to the side with a great heave while the legs pushed off from the fireplace bricks, and it fell out of the hearth onto the floor in front of us. After that, they just sort of… flopped, like a fish out of water, blind and helpless. The legs kept trying to get up onto their knees, but they weren’t able to push the hips off the ground, so the butt kept ending up sticking straight up while the legs scrambled and slipped against the smooth floor. The absurdity of what we were seeing took some of the terror out of it, and Ezu and I exchanged an uncertain glance.

“Well,” he said, “I think we can probably handle this one without too much trouble.” He started to draw his sword, undoubtedly planning on giving the legs a poke to gauge their reaction, but he had spoken too soon.

We should have figured more was coming. Legs can’t scream, and there had been definite screaming coming from the chimney. There was a sudden rattle that came from the metal flu, and without anymore warning the other half of the man fell into the hearth.

Just a torso and above, he pushed himself up with his arms and began to drag himself out of the fireplace, dragging his abruptly ending torso behind him. He was hideous, with a craggy, pitted face that looked more ghoul than human, and wild yellow eyes. He dragged himself towards his legs, reaching out a gnarled hand to grab them by a flailing ankle when he got near enough. He dragged the legs towards himself and with some effort, managed to pull the hips up to where his torso had been severed. The legs didn’t make it easy, they seemed to have a mind of their own, and evidently rejoining their better half was not on their agenda. But he finally forced the two halves together, and the mottled flesh seemed to knit back together like water droplets joining the moment they touch.

Ezu and I watched all of this without reacting. But them the man looked around—his gaze sliding right over us as if we weren’t there at all—and alighted on the pile of blankets I had been using as a makeshift bed. Scrambling unsteadily to his feet, he made a beeline for them.

“No way,” I said, moving automatically to intercept him before he could so much as touch them. I was not having a ghost—zombie—whatever foul up my blankets, not today, not ever, and I acted without giving consideration to how the man might react.

Ezu reached out to grab me when he realized I was moving, but he was startled and I was faster. I put myself between my bed and the man, holding out my sword as a buffer between us. The man skidded to a halt, looking at me with a mixture of surprise and hatred.

“No, nuh-uh,” I said, trying to force him to take a step back by advancing. He didn’t move. “Those are my blankets, those are all I have to myself in the world, and I already have to share them with the horse. Get away.”

The man grunted and took a step towards me, trying to move around the point of my sword. I prodded him in the chest with it, forcing him to move back. He pushed the sword by the flat edge away and just tried to shove right past me, his strangely slimy skin, as cold as the stone floors beneath my feet, making me recoil when his hand brushed against mine. But his touch wasn’t much more disturbing than that of the mermaid’s had been—both were equally cold and slimy—so after my initial repulsion, I pushed back, shoulder checking him so hard that he fell right on his ass.

Ezu was at my side a second later, trying to drag me away from the man, but he didn’t need to. The man looked up at me with deep offense, but didn’t get back up. He seemed utterly defeated by being knocked down. He just sat there, gazing around the room, as if waiting for something.

“That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen you do, and I’ve seen you do a lot of stupid things,” Ezu growled in my ear. “You have no idea what he is, or what he is capable of. He could have ripped your head off!”

“He can barely walk in a straight line, I was pretty sure he wasn’t coordinated to put up too much of a fight,” I said. His legs indeed still seemed unusually independent of the wishes of their master. “Besides, you would have saved me if it came to that.”

“I’m flattered by your confidence in me, but try to remember that I am a mere mortal; I’m not anymore invincible than you are.”

We didn’t have the chance to continue our conversation. Moments later, more sounds of scratching, soon followed by moaning that began to turn into high, keening cries came from the chimney. Over the course of the next five minutes, another one; two; three; four; five men fell into the hearth, one half at a time. As they were all putting themselves together, the first man managed to struggle to his feet and toddled over to the chimney, where he patiently waited until a series of bones fell down the length of the chimney; more the long bones of the legs and arms, followed finally by two human skulls. The man gathered all of these up and distributed them among the others. Since we were being entirely ignored, Ezu and I just stood and watched, baffled by whatever it was they were doing.

They began to arrange the bones in a triangular pattern, taking the skulls with them about a hundred feet away. And then… they bowled.

They were bowling, using nine long bones precariously balanced on their ends as pins, and the skulls as bowling balls.

We watched in confused fascination for perhaps ten minutes.

“You know, I’m a pretty fair bowler,” I jokingly said to Ezu under my breath. “Maybe we should ask to join in.”

It had only been meant for Ezu’s ears, but even the slightest sound echoed strangely in this long, empty stone hall, and all the men looked up and directly at me.

“Have you any money?” one said, his voice the creaking of a coffin lid.

“Uh—I… yes?” I said, taken aback.

“Then bowl,” he said. I looked at Ezu, and he shrugged.

“What happens if we lose?” I said, not about to unwittingly enter any devil deals.

“Then you lose money,” the man said, and it was plain from his tone that he thought I was a little on the simple side.

So… we bowled. It was the most surreal experience I’d ever had, even more so than the murder gingerbread somehow. Truth be told, I was actually a terrible bowler, and it was impossible to roll a skull in a straight line. Ezu ended up being halfway decent surprisingly, despite the fact that he had never bowled before. That actually probably gave him an advantage, since I was accustomed to perfectly round balls and smooth bowling lanes, while Ezu was learning from scratch using human bones on a stone floor. He only had to learn, whereas I had to unlearn, and then relearn. In the end, he ended up winning back nearly as much money as I lost.

And then, after what felt like hours and hours, somewhere in the house a clock struck 3 AM, and everything—the men, the bones we were bowling with—disappeared before our eyes. We were left standing in the middle of the empty room, Ezu’s arm still outstretched from where he had been moments away from releasing a skull gripped by the empty eye sockets at a particularly tricky 7-10 split.

“Huh,” I said.

“Huh,” Ezu agreed.

“Well, that could have gone a lot worse.”

“How much did we lose?”

“Um… like… five, six ounces?” I guesstimated, trying to judge the weight of the coin purse in my hand compared with how heavy it had been at the beginning of the game.

Ezu groaned. “You bankrupted us,” he lamented.

“Hey,” I snapped, deeply offended, but unable to actually argue the point because it was pretty accurate.

We rearranged our blankets and things, stoked the fire so that a few low flames sprang back to life, and we settled back down. Despite having barely slept at all so far, we didn’t feel very tired anymore. We sat back to back, so we could see anything that was coming from either direction of the long hall. I tried to focus on enjoying the feeling of Ezu’s warm back against mine while I could, appreciating every second, since I knew that this moment of peace was likely to be interrupted at anytime by the third challenge we would undoubtedly have to face, before we would be allowed to leave the haunted manor.

It was impossible to keep a sense of time in the dark and the quiet, while the storm raged on ceaselessly outside, but finally some internal, biological clock told me that dawn wasn’t far off. Fatigued was setting in hard now, and my head was beginning to dip lower and lower onto my chest, when suddenly those great oak from doors that lead outside flew open with a bang.

Ezu and I were wrenched from our sleepy stupors and scrambled to our feet, swords in hand, standing so close together that our shoulders touched. Ezu reached out and grabbed my hand in his, squeezing it tightly.

The figure of a man standing in the open doorway was illuminated by a flash of lightening, and he loomed huge, a bear of a man. He strode into the hall, his eyes fixed on us, his hand resting on a rusty, stained axe that hung from the belt at his waist.

He stopped in from of us, looking down with sneering scorn. He was frightful to behold, with a face molded from nightmares and muscles that bulged and rippled beneath taught skin. But he was an old man, his hair and beard long and white, his face wrinkled, his hands veiny and liver spotted.

“You wretches,” he snarled, flecks of spittle leaping from his lips with the vehemence of his words. “Shudder now, for you are about to die.”

“You’ll have to kill us before we kill you,” Ezu countered, sounding much braver than I felt at the moment. The man was probably twice his size. “There are two of us, and only one of you. You’re outnumbered.”

“I’ve got you, and you’ve nowhere to run or hide,” growled the man. “I could crush the both of your skulls at once in the palms of my hands like grapes. You’re mine.”

“Don’t boast,” Ezu said, and his tone was as firm and sharp as if he were reprimanding an misbehaving child. Even the huge man looked a little taken aback. “I am just as strong as you are, and probably even stronger.”

“Ezu,” I hissed at him, but he waved me into silence. I shut my mouth, and reverently hoped he had a plan, because I sure didn’t, apart from “run” and “hide” and possibly “pee pants”.

“We shall see,” said the old man. “If you are stronger than I am, I shall let you go. Come, let us put it to the test.”

The old man strode past us, heading for a doorway at the opposite end of the long hall, one that led deeper into the dark bowels of the manor. Ezu and I hesitated, and I considered the possibility of just turning around and running out the open doors while the old man’s back was turned. But then he stopped and turned to face us again, his eyes narrowing, and I knew he guessed what I was thinking. And I also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would catch us if we ran, and we would stand no chance at all.

So Ezu and I, still tightly clasping hands, followed the old man.

He led us through dark passageways, until we came to a blacksmith’s forge. There were several huge anvils on the ground, and the old man walked up to one of them, walked around it, inspecting it. Then he stopped and pulled out his massive ax. He swung it up over his head, and with a mighty bellow he brought it down onto the anvil, driving it deep into the ground with a single blow.

Ezu and I jumped nearly out of our skins, and I couldn’t help the stifled shriek of shock that escaped me. I hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly hadn’t been that. The old man looked at us, an expression of malicious glee twisting his face. I could feel Ezu’s hand shaking slightly in my grasp, but he gave a reassuring squeeze and let go. I didn’t want him to go, I was afraid of what might happen once he was out of my reach.

“I can do better than that,” he said, his voice steadier than his hands, and he took an ax off the wall and went up to one of the other anvils. The old man stood nearby, eager to watch Ezu’s inevitable failure. In act, he practically loomed over Ezu on the opposite side of the anvil, his wicked eyes gleaming, and his long, white beard hanging down. Ezu raised the ax high above his head, and stuck the anvil with all his might. It cracked right down the middle, wedging the end of the old man’s beard, which had been dangling on the anvil, into the split. He was trapped, trapped by his beard, unable to wrench himself free.

“Now it’s your turn to die,” Ezu said, slightly breathlessly, and he stooped with pick up the old man’s own ax, which had fallen from his hands when he had first tried to pull his beard free.

“No, stop!” the old man cried, raising his hands to shield his face. Somehow he no longer seemed as huge and hulking as before. He seemed to have shrunk in on himself, just a stooped, scrawny little old man. “If you spare me, I’ll give you great riches! There are three chests of gold in the cellar of this house. Of these, one you should give to the poor; the second to the rightful king of this land; and the third is for you.”

I gave a great cry of relief and ran to Ezu, throwing my arms around his neck. He let the ax fall to the floor with a clatter so he could hold me tightly back.

“I was sure we were both going to end up dead this time,” I confessed. “Did you have that planned the whole time?”

Ezu laughed, his voice cracking just a little. “No, not at all. I didn’t really have anything planned, I was just hoping that some way out of this situation would present itself eventually. When we came in here, I was originally planning on just trying to hit him with an ax before he had time to get me first, but then I noticed the split in that old anvil, that it was only one blow away from cracking in half, and then his beard was dangling right there while he was standing over me like that, trying to intimidate me…”

I shook my head. “Luck. Stupid, blind luck, like usual. Well, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Speaking of which, three chests of gold? What are we going to do with those?”

“Buy a manor of our own?” Ezu suggested. “Preferably one that isn’t haunted.”

“Not a bad idea, but how the heck are we supposed to carry three chest full of gold with us through the Grimm Woods?” I pointed out. “We’re already carrying just about all our horse are capable of.”

Ezu looked rather crestfallen. “Every time we get rewarded with obscene amounts of money and lavish promises of titles and status, we have to turns our backs and return to our lives of homeless poverty.”

I looked at the old man, who trembled as he awaited our judgment, and wondered what to do.

Then I thought of a book—not The Book, not the Grimm Brother’s fairy tales; but another book entirely, one about a little folk; and a great, all seeing evil; about a long journey with a fiery volcano at the end of it; and a ring of power. And I thought of one of the battles from that book, and the unexpected army that one of the characters brought back with him to turn the tides of war.

“We can’t take the gold, but I’ll ask another promise from you, in return for sparing your life.”

“Anything,” the old man pleaded.

“Do you hold any power over the other spirits that dwell in this house?”

“I am the most powerful of all of them, so they must do as I command.”

“Then I ask that you come when we call. If we have a time of need and call for your aid, you and all the other spirits of this house will come and fight for us, against our enemies.”

“I can only grant that request once,” said the old man. “Even I would not have the power to summon that many spirits to your aid more than once.”

“That’s fine. Do we have a deal then?”

The old man nodded solemnly.

“I guess you can release him,” I said to Ezu. He looked slightly doubtful, but the old man was so shrunken and fearful now that it was impossible to be afraid of him any longer. Ezu gripped the handle of the ax and with a few minutes hard effort, he managed to pull it free from the split in the anvil, releasing the old man’s beard. He vanished on the spot, nothing more than a wisp of smoke where he had been standing a moment before.