Piper and the Gren - Part 4

Critter ambled his way to the dark alcove and flipped on the art lamp attached to the drawing table. The sudden cone of light made the rest of the basement seem even darker. The disheveled man brushed a half-finished sketch onto the floor and turned to rummage through the stacks of paper on the bookshelf.

Piper and Simon could only watch quietly.

Critter muttered incoherently and Piper was able to pick out words like, “evidence,” “where the”, and “should be here,” as Critter pulled various sheets and folders to stack them on the drawing table. When he seemed pleased that he had found everything he was looking for, he looked at his pile with satisfaction and gestured for the children to join him.

A spike of panic twisted its way through Piper as she considered joining Jeffery Creedor at his small desk. She needed to know everything she could about the gren, but was unwilling to abandon the safety of the stairs. She turned doubtfully to Simon but the older boy’s face betrayed the same anxiety.

Critter leaned on his table and laughed a sharp bark that echoed off the low ceiling. He made a theatrical show of pushing papers back into folders. “Well…if you’re too scared to even look at what I’ve found…then you’re probably too young to know the truth anyway. It’d just give you nightmares,” he cooed through a toothy grin.

“We have a friend waiting outside,” blurted Simon with as much bravado as he could muster. “If you do anything to us, people will know.”

Critter considered this. “That’s good thinking. It’s who…that Toby Cooper kid that snuck into Medry’s yard last week? The one you kids call Toady, right?” His smile spread as he watched their unease. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. And since I know where he lives…I really don’t see what good it does to have him out there.”

Piper felt Simon’s hand on her shoulder as he started retreating.

Critter laughed again and set off another coughing fit before he managed, “Oh, you guys are priceless.” He tapped his finger in thought. “My point is…if you really want to know about the gren…you’re going to have to take some risks. There’s no way around that. So, you can either just go home and keeping playing your little ‘who can get closest to the tree’ game or you can trust me.” He idly spun the folder and smirked as he caught Piper staring at the research. Something about the way he looked at her made her skin crawl.

Piper wanted to run as far away from Critter as she could, wanted to flee back to the safety of her home and never think about this horrible place ever again. But the obsession of the gren would not allow her to walk away from the promised information. Her dreams of violence and war would not relinquish its hold on her imagination. She moved toward Critter and was stopped by Simon’s hand on her shoulder. He shook his head in confusion. She could only whisper, “I have to, Simon. I have to.”

Simon considered this as he glared at the patiently waiting Critter. He nodded solemnly and released her shoulder but stepped in front of Piper before she could move. He walked confidently across the room and stepped close to Critter, using himself as a shield between the man and the space left for Piper.

Piper took a tentative step forward but was suddenly distracted as a fleeting shadow slipped across the closed blinds of the high window tucked against the ceiling. She startled and Critter whipped his head toward the window. Simon flinched away from the man’s sudden movement.

“Holy crap, guys!” exclaimed Simon. “You scared me.” He looked about in confusion as neither Critter nor Piper moved. “It was just a cat or something. Come on.”

No one but Simon seemed convinced of this theory, but Piper found that while the movement had frightened her, she did not feel afraid of the implications. If anything, she felt the shadows of the dank basement fade slightly and she looked around the dingy room with a new clarity sparked by her small adrenaline rush. She looked at Simon, who had put himself in danger to help her and even now waited to protect her from harm. And Critter, who teased her and attempted to frighten her. As she stared at the greasy little man, she grew angry. Who was he to push her to fear? Who was he to torment her? In a flash of understanding, she looked about the room and realized that Jeffery Creedor was a weak and terrified man. He huddled in his basement and drew pictures of the creature that had scared him so long ago, his fear brewing and overflowing into self-loathing. And it was this self-loathing that had finally made him petty and cruel, so obviously willing to scare young children to make himself feel more powerful.

Suddenly, he looked as small to her as he had at the bottom of the stairs. She set her jaw and followed Simon with no hesitation in her steps. As she leaned against the table, her eyes locked defiantly on Critter. He smelled of liquor and Doritos.

“Ok then,” said a suddenly skittish Critter as he glanced at the window again. “What do you want to know?

“I want to know about the gren saving Medry,” replied Piper confidently. “I want to know why something like the gren would save his life.”

A small smile spread on Critter’s face as he considered the girl across the table from him. “Why? Well, I can’t say why that little beast does anything,” he said, “but I can tell you when…and probably from what.”

“Fine,” breathed Piper. “When? From what?”

“Right,” nodded Critter as his tar stained fingers flipped through a stack of notes before pulling a small stack that appeared to be photocopied from a book of some sort. “The Battle of Bang Bo…the Old Man was a bit sneaky on that. See, while it was fought in Vietnam, it wasn’t fought during Vietnam. And he knew I’d assume wrong.”

Piper glanced at Simon to insure that he was as confused as she was. Critter continued, his blood-shot eyes staring into Piper, attempting to regain the previous balance of power. “It was fought during the Sino-French War, when the French and the Chinese were slugging it out over who controlled what we now call Vietnam. But it was fought in 1885.” He paused with satisfaction and waited for their reaction.

“But that’s wrong,” Simon responded. “That would make Medry over 100 years old.”

Critter silently mouthed some calculations and flashed his stained teeth. “One-hundred thirty….four, actually. But I’ll get to that.”

Piper pondered this concept. Old Man Medry certainly looked elderly, but Piper wouldn’t have guessed him to be much older than her Grandpa…and he was somewhere in his 70s. “So, is he really that old or is he dead like the story says?” she asked just as Critter was about to resume.

The weasel-faced man shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“So, you think the gren can keep him alive like that?” asked Simon.

“No,” Critter muttered sarcastically, “I’m sure he just eats a really healthy diet.”

Simon huffed and countered, “Not if Old Man Medry IS the gren?”

“Pfft,” came Critter’s retort. “They’re not….look, would you let me finish? You came here because you don’t know anything about this and now you keep interrupting me while I’m trying to enlighten ya.” He mumbled something incoherent and then, “Now, where was I?” He startled briefly as he noticed Piper’s cool gaze had not drifted during his outburst.

Piper fought back a smile as she realized Critter’s only power was intimidation. “You were saying that he’s 134,” she spoke smoothly.

“Right. So, we know Old Man Medry says he was in the Battle of Bang Bo, and the history actually supports that. I found a record of a Lieutenant Guillaume Medrier. And before you interrupt me…that’s French for William. He led a small platoon of riflemen during the battle and was apparently a pretty sinister guy. The only reason he even shows up in the history the little as he does is because of French journal entries that talk about him killing his own men for small screw-ups. He supposedly had one soldier tied up and…” He paused. “It doesn’t really matter. Point is…nasty fellow, not very popular among the troops. And by all records I could find, he and most of his men died in that battle.”

“So he is a dead man,” whispered Piper.

Critter bobbed his head as if considering this idea for the first time. “Could be. Could be what he meant when he said the gren saved him.”

Piper recalled her dream of war and thought about Critter’s information. Suddenly her mind felt as if it were drifting back into the haze of the room. A vision of the smoky battlefield in her dream clouded over Critter’s disheveled art room. The smell of stale smoke was replaced by the tang of hot gunpowder and mud. The soft hum of the furnace was replaced by the screams of dying men. And her cool confidence was replaced with panic as she raced again through the horses and cannon fire…searching for someone for someone she had not seen in years…searching, she knew, for Medry. Dead and wounded soldiers lay mud-covered and tattered, but she rushed past them. The scene was clearer than when last she had dreamed it. She could now distinguish French soldiers from Chinese and could tell that French soldiers were fleeing the battlefield, pressed back by the massive number of Chinese.

She scanned the surrounding hills with a memory of a young Medry in her head. A vision she suddenly realized, of the boy who had thrown rocks in dream. She hadn’t seen him in years, she knew this somehow. But she also knew that he was close, lost amidst the confusion and carnage.

She was rushing toward the retreating troops when Critter’s room faded back into view.

Simon was speaking. “So do you think the gren came from Vietnam?”

“No,” Piper answered. Critter and Simon turned curious eyes toward Piper, but she continued, “They already knew each other.”

“Looks like someone knows more than she’s telling.” Critter leaned menacingly across the table.

Piper fought to hold onto her hard won confidence. “I didn’t think I did…but a few things are starting to make a bit more sense.”

“Go on,” encouraged Critter, his eye twitching slightly.

“For the last week or so, I’ve been having these dreams. But, they’re not dreams. I think…”

“Wait,” interrupted Simon. He licked his lips in concentration as he pushed his glasses up. “You’ve got more research in there. I think you should tell us a bit more before Piper tells you what she knows.” Piper had to wonder if he was simply trying to keep her from saying something insane.

Critter glared. “You’re right about one thing, you little geek. I’ve got mountains of research…years of research. And I was just giving it to you…all nice like…just cause you asked. But now you wanna play hard ball with whatever it is you think you know. And what are you even offering? You had a nightmare about the gren? Join the club!” He gestured to the countless sketches on the wall. “I aughta pound the living…”

“Hold on.” Piper calmly leaned away from the table. Her heart was racing but she refused to let Critter see. She knew from bullies in the past that cowering now would only encourage him; she needed to sooth the situation quickly. “You’re right. You’ve told us quite a bit already. But…what I have aren’t just nightmares. I’m pretty sure I’m seeing the gren’s past…through the gren’s eyes.”

Critter’s body relaxed with a smirk of disbelief as Piper continued. “I saw that battle. I was there three nights ago in my dreams. And I’ll tell you everything I’ve seen, but I just have one question first.”

Eyes darting from side to side, Critter considered. “You saw the Battle of Bang Bo through the gren’s eyes?”

“And more. I know the gren had seen Medry when he was about my age. It was looking for him specifically. All I want to know is how you know where Medry came from and how old he is.”

Simon gave Piper a small thumbs-up under the table. She ignored it.

The older man seemed convinced. “Ok, little girl, but then you tell me everything.”

Piper nodded.

A sneer spread across Critter face as he pulled a sheet of paper from the stack and slid it to Piper. “Easy. His enlistment papers from 1878 show his age as 17 and his home as Pignan. Your turn.”

“That’s it?” muttered Simon.

“Hey,” mused Critter. “Coulda asked a deeper question. Your turn.”

Piper looked at the blurry photocopy before her and then longingly at the stack of papers untouched in Critter’s pile. “Fine,” she sighed. “I saw Medry as a boy. I watched him from a tree while he tortured another boy he had tied up. It didn’t know Medry then. I think it was the first time the gren had seen him. It was enjoying watching…but I think maybe it was still going to attack the two boys.”

“Anything else?”

Piper shook her head. “Just the battle.”

Critter leaned back in his chair. “That’s pretty skimpy. I mean…so Medry was chuckin’ rocks at somebody when the gren saw him.” He stopped and turned to one of his drawings as he considered this new information. “I dunno.” His eyes went unfocused, lost in thought. “Maybe that is useful.”

Simon’s forehead crinkled in confusion. “Why would that be useful?”

A smile spread across Critter’s face. “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to start bartering our information. So, unless you’ve got something more to offer…you know, information or…something.” He let his eyes drift across Piper in a way that made her take an uncomfortable half-step behind Simon, Critter shrugged, “Then I think we’re done for today.”

* * *

Piper looked down at Simon and Toady through the branches of the oak tree in her back yard.

“Ok,” began Simon as he swung idly on the rings hanging from the tree’s massive branch, “Here’s my theory. The gren tried to kill Medry back in France, but Medry survived. So the gren tracks him down in Vietnam and kills him there. Then it brings him back from the dead as its slave as punishment for defying it the first time.” He looked up into the branches hopefully.

“It doesn’t feel right,” said Piper, picking mindlessly at a loose piece of bark. “When it was looking for Medry in Vietnam, it felt…I don’t know. It was worried…scared. It doesn’t seem right that it was looking for Medry just to kill him.”

Toady sat at the base of the tree. “I just want to get this straight. Are you both believing now that Piper can see the gren’s history? Psychic visions and stuff? And if so, why are you believing it so calmly? This is about the freakiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

The rings stopped swinging as Simon considered this. “I don’t know, Toady. It just…made sense at that time. Critter had the research that was backing up what Piper had seen. I mean…we are talking about a magical creature that lives in a tree and apparently has the ability to make an old French masochist live for over a hundred years. I guess I’m just not having too much difficultly tacking psychic visions onto the long list of weirdness.”

“God, you’re a geek, Simon,” Toady replied playfully. “Old French masochist…long list of weirdness. You’re right…but you’re a geek.”

Simon smiled and resumed his swinging. A small bit of bark landed in his hair, he brushed it away as Piper giggled from her branch. “But, if we do believe it…should we be a bit concerned for you, Piper? Is the gren just trying to scare you or what?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Piper. “We just don’t know enough, yet. If Medry died in that battle, what was the gren so worried about?”

Toady bounced his heel against a large root. “I saw this movie once where if the bad guy was there when you died…he could capture your soul or something.”

“That actually makes sense,” replied Simon. “If the gren had to be there when he died to bring Old Man Medry back from the dead…I’m sticking to my dead zombie slave theory.”

Toady laughed. “All zombies are dead, Simon. I think it’s part of them being zombies.”

“Yeah,” agreed Simon. “But ‘dead zombie slave’ just sounds cooler.”

“What do you think, Pipe?” Toady called as he picked an ant off his jeans.

“I think ‘dead zombie slave’ sounds silly.”

“No,” returned Simon. “What do you think about Medry and the gren?”

She swung her legs off the branch and climbed down the knotted rope tied to a higher branch. “Medry called the gren his friend…said it saved his life. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe you’ll have more dreams that will give you more information,” said Simon.

“And then we can go back to Critter and trade him for more of his research,” offered Toady, clearly hoping for a chance to prove himself brave enough to venture into the basement.

Piper shook her head and felt her skin crawl at the idea of returning. “No, I don’t think I want to go back to Critter’s. Tomorrow, I’m going down and talk to Oliver Blair.”

A grin spread across Toady’s face. “Just as cool…Simon can face the Critter…but you’ll want a real man with you for a vampire.”

As she slept that night she danced through a burning village. Flames jumped from house to house against a backdrop of a cloudless night sky as she skipped merrily down the alleyways. A woman dressed in a thick woolen sleeping gown was held back from the flames as she attempted to charge back into the inferno of her home. Tears of rage and terror dripped from her cheek as she shrieked, “Mon bébé! Mon bébé est dans la maison!" She beat her fists uselessly against the chest of the man holding her and called out again for someone to save her baby. A barrel-chested man in sleeping clothes stood beside the screaming woman. His jaw quivered with rage. He stared rigidly into the flames as men who looked like police wrapped his shoulders in a colorful jacket of some sort. Piper watched joyfully at the confusion and madness in the crowded streets. When she looked back to the man and the mother, he was staring directly at her as she crouched beside a stone column. Piper scampered away. Her sides hurting from laughter when she awoke.


She rolled out of bed and peered into the darkness. Though the moon was barely a sliver in the sky, it was enough to light the clouds behind the twisted limbs of the gren’s tree. She watched them sway and thought of fire.



...Continued in Part 5