Piper and the Gren - Part 5

Sunday October 22, 1995

The next day brought rain; a slow drizzle just firm enough to make a bike ride across town a miserable trek. The visit to Oliver Blair would wait until after school on Monday. Piper spent a gloomy afternoon watching the movie Gremlins and jumping each time the house creaked.

A young squirrel visited her in her dreams that night. It perched beside her in the branches of an old maple tree. She was overjoyed that the small creature had come so close. Its tail twitched. It cocked its head to gaze at her and Piper’s heart welled with the beauty of the moment. She reached out tentatively to stroke the squirrel’s fur and it turned to flee. The agony of rejection was crushing. Her hand shot out in an instant, too quickly for the squirrel to react. She snapped its neck.

She awoke with tears in her eyes and plodded down the hall to wash her hands. When even the soap and water failed to remove the feeling of the squirrel in her hand, she returned to her window and stared at the tombstones. Although this graveyard looked nothing like the lush rolling green into which they had lowered her father a little over a year ago, the solemn quiet of the headstones felt the same. But the pain and loss held in the decrepit Blair cemetery was old and forgotten, while the pain in those sunlit burial hills in Indiana was so fresh that her mother had ran. Away from home and to this small, Missouri town. Away from emotions and to helpful pills. Away from Piper and to silence.

Piper cried herself to sleep, her arm and head resting on the window sill.

Monday October 23, 1995

The Blair-Carmichael Funeral Home was a flat-roofed structure with an awkward A-frame chapel jutting from the center. Soft earth tones and a natural stonework façade were clearly meant to be soothing to grieving family members. But Piper, due to either anxiety about meeting Oliver Blair or memories of a similarly soothing funeral home in Indiana, found nothing about the structure comforting. She hesitated in the parking lot.

“Ok, Simon,” said Toady, rocking his bike between his legs. “I guess it’s your turn to sit out here and be our safety net.”

Simon turned to the shorter boy. “I’m pretty sure Blair is safe. He’s a bit strange, but he’s not going to hurt anybody.”

“No way, man. Fair is fair,” argued Toady. “We need a back-up. And this time it’s your turn to make sure we’re nice and secure.”

Simon shrugged and continued toward the door. “Ok, I’ll keep you safe, Toady. I left a note on my bed before I left this morning. If anything happens to us…my folks’ll know where we went.”

“What? That’s not…but I had to…”

Despite her unease, Piper smiled as she led the two bickering boys into the building.

The entry room was filled with soft colors, outdated furniture, and the smell of flowers. A painting of a peaceful creek meandering through trees hung on the wall opposite them. As Piper’s eye drifted to the branches of the painting’s nearest tree, she shivered as she recalled the sickening crack of the squirrel’s neck. She stuck her hands in her pockets to brush away the memory. When even that failed to erase the feeling of guilt that washed over her, she called out, “Hello,” to further distract herself. Even muted against the soft fabrics, her voice was stark against the silence. “Mr. Blair?” she called again, hoping to find him before she lost her nerve.

Sounds of movement from an office to their right preceded the appearance of a meek man in a black suit with thin red pin stripes. He scratched the side of his prominent nose with fingers bejeweled in multicolored rings and glanced behind the children to see if there were any adults following. “How, um…how can I help you, children?” he asked in his awkward approximation of soothing.

Piper had seen this man many times during his visits to Old Man Medry’s house, but always from a distance. She thought for a moment at how perfectly his quiet voice matched his shuffling mannerisms and salt and pepper hair before answering, “I have some questions about the gren.”

Oliver Blair sighed heavily. “I suppose it is almost Halloween. You kids need more details for your scary stories? Need more reasons to harass a poor old man?” He shook his head in disgust and continued before anyone could say a word. “Fine. Um…the gren has to…uh…eat a child once a year to stay alive. Every Halloween.”

“Mr. Blair,” interjected Simon, but the pin-striped man continued.

“No, no. Allow me to continue, my boy.” His hands flittered as if summoning magic. “It’s got claws that can shred little children like…like butterfly wings and the gren’s tree…the tree is stuffed with the bones of the twenty-one children it’s eaten from his past All Hallow’s Feasts. Now, go. Go and spread the sinister stories amongst your candy-fueled, tresspassing friends.”

Silence returned to the waiting room as the three children speechlessly stared at the undertaker. Oliver turned and straightened the forest painting, obviously killing time while he waited for them to leave.

It was Toady who recovered first. “The tree’s filled with bones?”

“Mr. Blair,” began Piper slowly, ignoring Toady. “I don’t know if what you’re saying is true. But I’ve been having strange dreams about the gren and I just want to know what you think they might mean. I’m not really looking for Halloween stories.”

The undertaker’s shoulders drooped as he realized his guests were not leaving “Ah,” he began as he turned back toward them. “So you’ve gotten yourself too scared of your own stories and want me to explain that you have nothing to fear from the gren so that you can sleep at night. All the tales you kids spread about Will Medrier being brought back from Hell finally gave you the creeps?” He adjusted a large, gray-stoned ring. “Suit yourself…the gren’s as tender as a kitten. Probably fall asleep in your arms if you scratch its belly. Feel better?”

Simon rolled his eyes. “I think what Piper is saying is that she’s hoping you can tell her why she’s been dreaming about battles from the Sino-French War and burning babies and Medry as a kid throwing rocks at some other kid.”

Oliver Blair’ gaze drifted from Simon and held Piper’s eye for a few long seconds. He regarded her as if for the first time. “You’ve seen these things in your dreams?”

Piper nodded.

“And Piper, you say? You’re the Piper Bishop who…um…made the papers a few weeks ago?”

Piper reluctantly nodded again.

Unbuttoning his suit jacket’s bottom button, the funeral director lowered himself into one of the archaic chairs. His eyes darted swiftly back and forth as if contemplating his next comment. “How…” he began and then paused. “How did you come to the attention of the gren? Do you think?”

With frequent interjections from her friends, Piper recounted the story of Toady’s approach to the gren’s tree while Oliver stared into the carpet and nodded occasionally. She also told the fidgety man about her dreams, but found herself withholding the details about the squirrel. Of all the horrible things she had dreamed, of all the wicked thoughts she had experienced through the gren, thoughts of the poor squirrel filled her with a guilt unlike the others. The memory felt more personal, more intimate, and less willing to be shared with others. She had held this detail back from Toady and Simon and again felt compelled to hide it from Oliver Blair. She wiped her hands on her jeans to mute the feeling of soft fur against her palm.

For a long moment after she had finished, Blair sat idly running his fingers through his graying hair with a look of confusion on his face. “Well…” he started on three occasions but each time drifted back into thought. Piper stole a glance at Simon who could only shrug.

“Why is the gren trying to scare me like this?” prodded Piper.

“Oh, well…I really don’t think he’s trying to scare you. I’m just…um…hard pressed to come up with a good reason he would be sharing these particular memories with you. I can…I can understand why they’ve upset you. But, rest assured that the gren is…well he’s not…you know, going to hurt you.”

“Wait a second,” spat Toady. “Just a second ago the gren was filling its tree with bones. But now Piper shouldn’t worry.”

Oliver Blair stammered. “Well…yes…er. That was when you were kids pestering the gren. Now that you’re kids being pestered by the gren…well, I think you deserve more of…you know…the truth.”

“And what is the truth?” prompted Simon.

“Well. Have you considered maybe that the gren is…maybe confessing his worst side to you?” offered the undertaker. “Perhaps he doesn’t realize how scary it might be for a little girl to see these things. Maybe this is his fumbling sort of way of making friends.”

Piper tried to consider this explanation, but found herself confused again. “It showed me it burning a baby alive. That’s how it makes friends?”

Oliver’s head bobbed from side to side as he conceded the point. “True, but…” His eyes resumed their jerky side to side movement as he appeared to consider something new. “I went on a date a few years ago,” he began.

“What does that have to do with anything,” interrupted Toady.

“Really great person,” Oliver continued as if he had not heard the boy at all. “And I’m on this date thinking about how it could change my life if things go well, you know. And suddenly, I’m finding myself talking about how I snore and I’m telling gruesome stories about my business. And really, it’s not a gruesome business most of the time. But, that’s what I’m talking about. And I don’t even know why I’m doing it. You know…until later…looking back, it seems clear to me now. Do you see?”

The children shook their heads in unison. Simon finally took the initiative. “I still think the gren killed Medry at the Battle of Bang-Bo to make him his dead zombie slave.”

“What?” exclaimed the stunned Blair. “No. Where are you coming up with that?”

“I know the gren was at the battle from my dream,” explained Piper, “and Critter told us that Medry died at the Battle of Bang Bo.”

“Oh, sweet Lord in Heaven,” Oliver blurted. “Jeffery Creedor is your source of information? No wonder you kids are so full of dark zombie slave talk. Look…if I can prove to you that the gren did not kill Will Medrier, will you promise to consider what I said about the gren not trying to scare you?”

“Sure,” responded Piper.

“And will you promise to stay away from Jeffery Creedor?”

“No problem,” Piper agreed, having already decided this on her own.

Oliver regarded her quietly for a moment before making up his mind. “Ok. Follow me.” The funeral director pushed himself up from his chair and shuffled his way back to the office from which he had emerged. The three children followed.

Except for the immense bookshelf that dominated the back wall, the office continued the theme of generically soothing imagery and fabrics. A painting of a strange church hung on the wall opposite the desk. The stone walls of the building blended seamlessly into the rock face of a cliff. Piper found the image inspiring.

“Did you paint that, Mr. Blair?” she hazarded.

Oliver, who had been making his way behind the desk to the bookshelves, regarded the painting for a moment before answering. “It’s a little rough, but it’s the best I could do when I was twenty-five.”

“No,” insisted Piper. “It’s great. Is that a real place? Or did you make it up?”

“Oh, it’s a real place,” he nodded absently, keeping an eye on Toady and Simon as they appraised the various items on the antique bookshelf.

“What used to go here?” asked Toady innocently, gesturing to an empty frame built into the wooden shelves.

With an eyebrow raised, Oliver replied, “I think there was a mirror there once.”

“Hmm,” was Toady’s thoughtful reply as he continued down the shelves. “Is this you and Old Man Medry?” asked Toady, pointing to a framed photo.

Oliver made an affirmative grunt and he pulled a small step stool toward the shelf.

Toady squinted at the picture. “Wow, you look way younger…but Medry looks exactly the same.”

“Must be one of the advantages of being a dead zombie slave,” whispered Simon. To Oliver he said, “That doesn’t look like Missouri. Did you know Medry before you sold him that house?”

“I didn’t sell him the house. He just lives there,” replied Oliver as he climbed the stool.

Simon pondered this for a second. “So, you’re the gren’s landlord? Cool!”

Blair ignored him.

Simon returned to the photo. “Where are you guys in that? That building looks weird.”

“A long way away from the Battle of Bang Bo…if that’s still what you’re interested in,” replied Blair. Piper nodded and Oliver returned his attention to the books.

Piper scanned the titles and found most of them to be about grief and healing, but Oliver reached to the top shelf and pulled down an engraved box. Placing the box on the desk between himself and Piper, he pulled out a small stack of papers and an ancient, tattered book.

“This is a book called The Quiet Walker,” said Blair, spinning the old book so Piper could see it upright. It made no more sense right side up since the title was written in some sort of oriental language. “It was written by a veteran of the Sino-French War named Zhijun Guo. Beautifully written story. It’s fiction, but pulls from many of his wartime experiences…truly magnificent. However, what’s interesting for your situation is that there’s a scene in which a small group of Chinese soldiers are searching the area around the battlefield after Bang Bo. They encounter a French Lieutenant hiding in a cave and are about to kill him when they are attacked by what the author calls a ‘ferocious xiao yao jing.’ This xiao yao jing kills everyone but the narrator.”

“What’s a sheow yao ding?” asked Piper.

Oliver spun a piece of paper toward Piper. Three Chinese characters had been written in ink above various scribbled notes. “Xiao means small,” began the hawk-nosed man. “Yao means…um…evil in an inhuman sort of way…monstrous maybe. And Jing means spirit. So ‘xiao yao jing’ would translate roughly as goblin.”

“But it was just fiction, right?” asked Simon quietly.

“True enough,” Blair granted. “But see…the rest of this book is very historically accurate. Book critics have countless interesting theories why Guo wrote this strange scene with a magical creature in it. For instance, here’s one who says it represents,” he paused to read from the circled text on a photocopied page, “and I quote, ‘The betrayal of the mythology that had inflated the Chinese sense of invulnerability and which had hindered their ability to properly fight the French.’ Unquote. And while that sounds like an impressive bit of scholarlship, I’d say they’re over-thinking it considering you’ve got a real life xiao yao jing talking to you in your dreams, right?” He smiled reassuringly at Piper. “So, add this to your dream…and I think it’s pretty clear that the gren didn’t kill Will Medrier; it saved him.”

“By slaughtering a bunch of people…a bunch of trained soldiers,” replied Simon. “The gren’s a killing machine and that’s supposed to make Piper feel better?”

“Well…yes, I suppose you could look at it that way. But, the people who were killed were…um…the bad guys, right? So it’s a happy ending. The gren saved his friend,” Oliver seemed to reconsider the wisdom of sharing this story with Piper.

Piper was unsure of how to react. She understood that Oliver Blair intended her to find comfort in the gren’s dedication to its friend…but the image of the gren killing several armed men made her feel cold and defenseless.

His eyes once again darting about in thought, Blair muttered to himself, “Ok, not so comforting as I had thought. How about….” He pulled a piece of paper from his stack and considered it for a moment. “Oh yes, this is….no, no, you’d probably find this disturbing too.”

Simon glanced nervously at Piper as the man behind the desk kept digging through his notes. “Well,” concluded Oliver, “the point is that you promised to think about my alternate explanation if I proved the gren didn’t kill Mr. Medrier. And I did that. So, go on home and…um…just don’t attack Will Medrier in a cave and you’ll be perfectly safe, right?” He forced a chuckle that dwindled away as he realized the children were not joining in his attempted levity.

* * *

“I don’t know about you,” said Simon, “but that didn’t really make me feel any better.”

Piper shook her head in agreement. “Some how ‘it probably won’t kill you, go home,’ just didn’t do it for me,” she huffed as she pushed the dangling ring away and caught it on its return. She had hoped for much more from Oliver Blair and now found herself out of options. “I guess we could try to talk to Medry himself,” she offered.

Toady stood silently, looking up into the multicolored leaves of the Bishops’ oak tree. “I think we should find out what was on that paper Blair didn’t want us to see,” he spoke without looking away from the limbs overhead.

Simon, idly picking at a patch of loose paint on the patio steps, sighed. “Yeah…that guy knows tons he’s not telling us. Did you see that picture, Piper? He and Medry were at some kind of castle.”

“Like Snyder’s Castle?” she pointed to the northwest.

“No, like a real castle. Like knights and kings and stuff.”

Toady stuck his hands in his jacket pocket. “But I think we need to see that paper.”

“Yeah,” snapped Simon. “I agreed with you. But he said he’s not going to show it to us. What do you want to do about it?”

A grin spread across Toady’s face. “Well,” he said as he pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, “I think we should just read it ourselves.”

Piper pressed closer, a look of disbelief etched on her face. “What did you do, Toady?” she asked as he handed her the sheet.

“Well…no one was giving you answers. And, I mean…you deserve answers I think. So I…borrowed it.” He smiled sheepishly at Piper.

Piper stammered speechlessly for a moment before managing, “Thanks, Toady.”

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” questioned Simon. “You just kept it to yourself?”

“Yeah…it was a cooler delivery this way.”

As she unfolded the sheet, she saw that it was a photocopy of a hand-written letter. Her heart sank as she looked closer. “It’s not in English.” She looked for any clue that might help. She recognized the word “Medrier” scattered throughout the letter and quickly found one instance of the word “gren” in the second paragraph, but was unable to decipher anything meaningful.

Simon peered over her shoulders, attempting to make sense of the foreign text. “Oh, that says ‘lutin”…that means goblin.”

Toady peered once more up into the tree limbs. “If only we had a translation, huh,” he mused innocently.

Piper and Simon looked up from the letter in unison.

“You gotta be kidding me, Toady.” Piper shook her head. “You got the translation, too?”

Toady grinned.

Simon laughed aloud. “What’s the translation say?”

Shrugging and glowing with pride, Toady held the folded notebook page out for Piper. “Don’t know. I just saw it was a translation and left it at that. I figured I’d leave it for the one getting the death threats from the gren.”

Piper smiled despite her frustration as he pulled another piece of paper from his pocket. She smacked him playfully on the arm as she took the offered page.

The boys waited silently for a few long moments as Piper absorbed the information. The notes were written in flowing, circular handwriting that Piper assumed belonged to Oliver Blair, but the letter itself clearly predated the undertaker. Dated 1873, the letter was written by a Henri Medrier to his local prefect.

“What’s a prefect?” she asked Simon.

“Like a governor, I think. Why? What’s it say?”

“It’s a letter from Medry’s Dad, I think, to his governor. He says his 12-year old son Guillaume was attacked by a creature he calls the gren. He says the gren creature badly injured Guillaume, scarring his back and leaving him bed ridden for over a week. He also says he thinks this creature might be the same one that killed the prefect’s son in a fire a few months ago and he’s requesting the governor’s help in catching the gren.” Piper let the weight of her arms carry the page away from her as she stood motionless under the branches of her tree. Images from her dreams flashed through her memory. The wailing mother and the uniformed man beside her. The gren preparing to attack young Medry in the forest. Her mind flipped somersaults as she tried to reconcile the gren’s burning and assault of children with Oliver Blair’s assurance that everything was fine.



... Continued in Part 6