Chapter 22 Helena
Normally, I wouldn’t stoop to snooping. In this situation, however, there’d been no stopping myself.
What else was I going to do after being abducted Phantom of the Opera–style and deposited into a special supernatural episode of Cribs?
Though I helped myself to a self-guided tour of the sprawling apartment—which spanned about twice the size of mine—I did resist the urge to open any drawers or peek into any cabinets, not that there were many.
Unsurprisingly, the bloodred-meets-ink-black Addams Family aesthetic continued throughout with more soaring, coffered ceilings, dark wood paneling, parquet floors, sconces, chandeliers, and refined antique furniture.
Overall, my expedition of the Grim Reaper’s chambers yielded only a few new bits of information about him.
In addition to being partial to Gothic décor, he was, apparently, a musician.
Something we had in common. Though I’d only been playing the uke for a few years and mostly just strummed what I called “sunshine songs” for storytime.
In his music room (because why wouldn’t he have one of those?), several electric guitars hung along one wall—including a deep purple one signed by Prince that I dared not touch.
Grim also owned a vintage stereo console and a large (not to mention impressive) collection of vinyl that stuffed the shelved walls. And these I did riffle through.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover he had an eclectic taste in music, though I was. Perhaps because that (along with his possession of a lint roller covered—oddly—in glitter) made him seem, well, more human than… whatever he was.
This array of diverse genres and the general setup of the space bemused me, too, because I tried to picture him extracting the black discs from their sleeves, setting the needle in place with those bony hands, kicking back in the nearby armchair with a bourbon, and relaxing to the dulcet screams of the metal band Live Briefly and Fail while perusing the tracks on the back of a Tom Waits album.
But the spectrum of what he considered ear candy stretched even further than metal and Waitsian.
In addition to hundreds of titles and categories, I found Vivaldi, albums by a slew of metal bands, every Metallica album ever produced, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Billie Eilish, Tool, Depeche Mode, Evanescence, Muse, the Cure, and—as Hunter would have been delighted to see—My Chemical Romance, just to name a few.
Would Grim notice if I slipped in a Taylor Swift album?
Would I survive his wrath when he did?
I giggled—albeit nervously—at the image of him irritably yanking Taylor’s 1989 (one of my favorites) off the shelf before engulfing it in hellfire.
And why did I find that image kind of… cute?
After exiting into the hall, which wrapped the exterior of the central balcony room I’d awakened in, I walked its perimeters again. This loop confirmed that Grim had no bedroom or bed. He did oddly, though thankfully, have a restroom.
Relishing the opportunity to freshen up, I washed my hands and face in the gorgeous black marble sink.
I tried to tidy my hair, but without the help of a mirror, I couldn’t be sure I accomplished much.
He possessed just as many of those as he did windows, a detail that suggested Cedric had been right about Grim’s aversion to them.
That aversion made little sense to me, because that face, the one I’d seen, certainly got my blood pumping.
Maybe he merely found mirrors useless because he only managed to steam them up whenever he encountered one.
Learning that was the case would not have shocked me half as much as his affinity for music.
Grim also possessed a scythe room—I wasn’t sure what else to call it—and I tried not to be disconcerted upon entering the slim walkway flanked by two rows of differently styled scythes.
The master of these implements had filed this array of tools in two lines, the handles clenched by skeletal-hand-shaped holders that extended from the walls.
The blades faced away from the long stretch of polished wooden floor, making the trek to the door that waited at the end of the corridor—as red as everything else in this odd apartment—seem a touch less ominous.
I made my way past their ranks, drawn by that door whose knob took the shape of yet another skeletal hand—this one empty and open, a handshake waiting to happen.
When I gripped that frigid metal palm, it proved unyielding, refusing to twist one way or the other, or to lift or lower—yet there didn’t seem to be a latch or a slot for a key. At least not on this side.
There had to be an answer to this riddle, though, and since this was the only door in a dwelling filled with unimpeded archways, I could only conclude this was the exit.
Exit to where?
As I glanced between the nearest scythe, held by a closed hand, and the open hand of the door, thoughts did occur to me. Interesting ones that asked if it might be worth it to try playing Pass the Pointy.
I gave the handle of the scythe closest to me a tentative touch, peering up at the massive black serrated blade fashioned into the shape of a raven’s wing.
“Fancy,” I whispered.
Maybe, since I now knew fate had it out for me, I shouldn’t be playing with sharp objects. But then, if I was going to perish by way of toppling scythe, wouldn’t I have fallen prey to one of the hundred I’d passed on my way to this one?
I grasped the handle and gently tugged. Then, with a yip of surprise, I rushed to brace the scythe with my other hand as the skeletal one snapped open, releasing the tool to me.
“Whoa, Nelly,” I half muttered, half grunted, stumbling back a step as I marveled up at the beautiful—and lethal—blade, galled by how heavy the thing actually was. Seriously, this bad boy would take major muscles to hold upright, let alone wield with any precision.
Grim didn’t have muscles—at least not in his Reaper Man form. He had, however, displayed impressive strength, both the physical and mental sort, in the face of danger.
He’d only faltered once that I’d witnessed, and that had been at the whispered name of Phineas.
I still didn’t know who Phineas was. It wasn’t my place to ask, and given Grim’s response to the whispers from those mirror wraiths, there likely wasn’t any wisdom to uttering the name in his presence at all.
Not that I had the guts to dare. Despite the rescues and our interactions, and all I’d learned about him, there were still aspects of him that terrified me…
Apparently, not enough for me to be a good Helena, sit tight, wait for him, and not tinker with his important, highly dangerous, work-related stuff.
Carefully, moving slowly, I half shifted, half dragged the scythe over to the empty skeletal hand, which, with the same ferocity as the one that had released the weapon, clasped it.
The door popped open, and I jumped back as it swung wide, revealing a rectangle of the purest blackness I’d ever encountered.
“Holy smokes,” I whispered, “it worked.”
I gave myself a small and quiet round of applause for figuring out the trick, but then my trepidation returned.
While I wanted to leave, to explore, a small inner voice warned me to stay put, where Grim had said it was “safe.”
But then strange voices filtered down to me. Muffled and echoed, they came from above—one male, one female, both heavily accented.
Their words came garbled—at least until I drifted to stand at the brink of the darkness.
“—certainly wasn’t something I expected to happen this century,” said the female voice, her Scottish accent thick, lilting, and musical. “A right turnup for the books.”
“The good news is, we’ve done what we can for now,” replied the man, and I placed his accent as German.
“Perhaps when he returns and we tell him what we’ve done, we will get answers.
It’s entirely likely, though, that he’ll confess nothing and insist on continuing with whatever plan he has devised in that bone head of his. ”
“Hardheaded Grim,” lilted a third voice, also male. “Wouldn’t want to be him.”
“Always a damn lone wolf,” grumbled the woman—the girl?
“Bound and determined to be an island unto himself,” agreed the first male voice.
“If only we could talk to the lass.”
By “lass,” she had to mean me.
“Grim Grim found a pretty bird,” sang the third voice.
Finding my courage, I extended a trembling hand into the darkness and sucked in a short sharp breath when my fingers encountered a stone wall. Then, growing braver still, I explored with my foot until I discovered the tread of a stone step.
“I admit, I’m curious as well,” said the man with the German accent. “This turn of events is as unexpected as it is unprecedented. Especially when it comes to Grim.”
“You’re telling me!” exclaimed the girl, though they both fell quiet as I started to climb, their conversation interrupted by the low sliding of stone.
“Johann, look!” piped the girl as, above, a shaft of light ripped through the gloom, revealing the spiral stone staircase I now ascended. “I thought you said Grim left.”
“He did,” said the man. “You see his scythe is missing from the statue’s grasp.”
“Hello?” I called as I reached the top of the stairs, just before I poked my head into the enormous domed room that, at its center, hosted a little old man at a scribe’s desk wearing a familiar McDonald’s visor, an enormous and glorious raven perched on his shoulder.
Next to him stood a barefooted, redhaired, and pointy-eared preteen in a fairy costume.
An old-fashioned lantern sat at her feet, its panes lit with bright green light, which sparked and flared at my appearance.
Though the lantern rocked and rattled, neither the girl nor the man nor the bird paid it any mind.
Instead, they gaped at me.
“Losh!” The girl put her hands on her hips. “You are a bonnie one, aren’t ya?”
“Told you,” said the bird as he ticked his head at me, revealing himself as the source of the third voice. “Grim Grim caught a pretty bird. Strangest thing we’ve ever heard.”
“I’m… Helena,” I said, which made the girl smirk.
“Welcome, Helena,” said the man, his voice echoing faintly in the enormous chamber. “To the Hallowed Halls.”