Grimmun
Oliver Smith
It was an unseasonably mild Wednesday when the Grimmun came marching in again.
The Grimmun came marching in. He jumped off the forty-eight bus surrounded by a fug of evil with his long grey coat flapping in the back draft. He stirred up a cloud of dust and malice with his big hobnail-hammered boots and marched down fuming like a stove pipe past the gnarled crouch of the Raven Tree.
An old crow watched with thousand year old beads from a gnarled hole in the Raven Tree’s crouch. A bad old crow in a grey hood with moth-chewed wings and a worm-holed beak, a black-souled crow that shadowed and scavenged on the little green hill called Seven Kings Sleeping.
Grimmun tumbled down the hill and somersaulted over Mr. Lucitus’s machine in an awful hurry. Sweet-Caraway Hisop saw him park the Grimlaw Stone in the corn-stalk stubbled Longfield. He stood back to look at his work, gave a grim nod and descended into the valley of Whipple’s Po like a bad-luck mucked-up winter fog.
Under the broad brim of his wrinkled whale-skin hat a shadow mask lay over his eyes.
Or where his eyes should be.
All Caraway could see was the gristled grim old mouth. Grimmun came marching in after a thousand years or so of absence. His lip pealed at the edge from the cold bite of the north-frost. He dog-snarled it up over his canines, showed a mouth full of gold teeth.
Biters, nippers and grinders.
He came striding down that rough, ice-glittered gutter-path in the low November sun. At a terrible hasty pace down the old stream-track.
Grimmun came down among the remains. The devastation. Dada Hisop’s timber harvest. As Grimmun came down he paid no heed to the small creatures beneath his feet. They popped splat splat splat under his iron-shod feet.
They burst, ruptured, exploded.
He looked around at the fallen tree trunks, purposefully wiping the invertebrate yolk from his feet in the late afternoon glow.
He looked unhappy.
Caraway didn’t care. She had cakes from Mrs. Waldice. She sat on her log outside of the Bungalow eating her cake and Ratter, the cat, ignored her. Ratter was more interested in the hooded crow that had flown down from the Raven Tree and strutted up and down the roof cackling and mocking him.
Grimmun said, “The grove, the trees, my sacred trees.”
He put a big wind-up book before Caraway and said, “Tell me child, tell me in the name of the Grimlaw what marauders ravaged the land.”
“The Tacks-man came to see Dada. If Dada don’t pay him, the Tacks-man will knock tacks into his face and nails in his knees. Then if he still don’t pay his due, the Tacks-man will hammer a tin spike into his tummy. Dada has gone sell the timber for the Tacks-man’s tribute.”
Grimmun nodded and tapped on the windup book, “Book of the Grimlaw; Law Grimgods gave to men. Grimlaw is as you must, you must offer hospitality and I must accept.”
He opened the book and pointed to a line-word clockworked into the pages. “Stranger, that’s me, you must offer the Stranger your hospitality.” He tapped the page. “I must accept. Well, ain’t you going to offer?”
“Yes. Please, Mr. Grimmun, accept my offer of hospitality.”
“I do,” he said, and his mouth turned even downer.
“…in the name of the Grimlaw.”
His face quivered in the shadow and the grim mouth said, “I shall heal this.”
He didn’t look like the sort to heal anything. Not with the Grimblades glittering under his coat.
The Grimmun unlatched a word-spring and set it pulsating so it keened and sang in the paper page so loud that Ratter legged it into the boiler shed to hide, then decided the boiler shed wasn’t safe enough, and legged it off towards the cliffs and terraces of the Oolites.
In the lee of the limestone cliff, a cloud formed a small thunderstorm that rained right over from the Seven Kings Sleeping down to the clearance. The storm spread to the hollow Raven Tree where the lightening sang in the crooked branches. The stony old crow flew back to his home and his throat heaved with the thunder song.
Weed upon weed grew from the stone and soil: little green shoots coiled aside the rocks. Sturdy saplings curled out, thickened, and became sun-lead spirals following the precession of years. Twisting green branches ran through unremembered decades in minutes. They unfurled fresh green leaves. Where the trees had been felled there grew a new stand of pure prime springtime oak woods.
Grimmun picked a flea off the crow’s feathers and said, “Now, they’ll be a price to pay, the magic don’t come for free. I never got it for free and I don’t do it for free. Under the Grimlaw you will be under an obligation. I demand a gift in return. Why, for nine full nights…”
“My Dada ain’t going to be chuffed with that,” Caraway said.
“What do you mean? What do you mean?” His mouth turned down into two hard creases.
He looked grimmer, upset even. Under the grey beard heathering his granite chin, his peeled lips quivered like limpid snail flesh.
“Well, he was getting a nice price for them. Cash down, my Dada would have paid off the tithes. Kept the Tacks-man away. Dada really ain’t going to be happy with tacks being hammered in his face.”
“What gift could make amends?”
“Don’t think nothing will. He’ll be gutted.”
§
On the second day, Caraway saw Lucke setting a mole-trap in the short field and told him she’d seen Grimmun.
“So he’s back is he?”
“Guess so.”
“What we need is the mortal enemy unsubjected to the Grimlaw.”
“I thought everyone had to obey the law.”
“There are laws and laws. Now Grimmun, he’s the Old Law; the Grimlaw, the law of obligations of gods and kings and victims, each pint of blood measured against gold and gold priced by the slaughter of the souls that held the gold. Before the Grimlaw there was the Wildlaw, the law of tooth and claw. That’s the Wulfer’s law. We need the Wulfer, the dog of the Wildlaw, as deep and wicked as Dead Man’s Cran. He has jaws of frost and winterwind. He’ll stare Grimmun down with his ice blue eyes of freezing screaming squealing pain. His coat is glacier ice, his teeth sharp as icicles. One look of him will pour the fear of death into Grimmun’s cup. Fill him up so he overfloweth with the terrors. We’ll just whistle him up and send misery-guts packing.”
Caraway didn’t like the sound of Wulfer.
“Are you sure the medicine ain’t worse than the ill?” she asked, “Are you sure the cure ain’t badder?”
“Well of course there’s always recourse to the Greylaw made by men learned in dusty books and precedents and woven from hairs that are split into quarters, hundredths and thousandths; and costed by each splitting, then charged and invoiced in guineas per hour. Have you got any money for the Greylaw? Neither have I. I don’t see much choice.”
“How do you get him then?”
“I don’t know-- I’ll look in Ezzy’s book.”
§
On the third day, Caraway was disturbed by shouting coming over the valley. She could see tall Tom Vander stood toe to toe with the Grimmun below the Grimstone. There were all the folk of Whipple’s Po watching; looking grim. Even Mr. Lucke, among them, arm in arm with Miss Ezz. Tom Vander shook his head.
Grimmun was nodding at him.
“You owe me, you took the gift and so you owes me.”
“We didn’t take any gift,” said Mrs. Waldice. “And we don’t want any.”
“She’s right,” said Tom Vander. “No one’s took a gift, now get.”
“Not likely, sonny,” said Grimmun. “It took me too long to get back to be leaving so soon. You tell ‘em, son, all your tribe. I must have sacrifices. It’s the Grimlaw. I must have blood sacrifice; an eye for a tooth and the truth for an eye, bring a strong man for Grimmun’s tribute. Get captives; bring a ploughman, a priest, a warrior, a strong one from over the hill. How about a king? A Christian one that’ll take a long...
…time...
…dying.”
Mr. Lucitus stepped out. “Supposing there were strong young people in the valley, supposing there were any Christians left and we were willing to sacrifice them to someone. Why would we sacrifice them to you?”
The Grimmun grimmed his mouth up tight and started winding the big rusty key in the back of the book.
“For nine full nights I swung in the windy tree, wounded by the spear...”
The gears and escapement clicked and ticked.
“...consecrated to myself...”
A mainspring creaked and wheezed.
“…on the tree whose roots have no name...”
The book rattled an evil old rhythm and a stain-all ran down his face and dripping down over the dusty trench coat.
“…that’s why.”
The book sang and the words raced round and round like a runaway rat. His fingers carved great bloody drops in the darkness and night fell all around him.
Mr. Lucitus said, “Now, I know I’m a bit slow, but that don’t sound like a reason. Call me dim, but it don’t sound like anything.”
“Well,” said Grimmun, “you need a teaching Mr. Lucitus. Look into my eye.”
We all looked, but there were no eyes.
Just the darkness. We were all alone with the book in the clockwork-grinding darkness. It promised us things. Not nice things though. Terrible things. It creaked and rumbled in its gears. “You’re mine,” it said. “You will give me slittings and hookings and hangings and skinnings. You owe me, for nine full nights I hung on the windy tree...”
“You’ve only been here two nights, Mr. Grimmun,” Caraway said.
Caraway saw the flash of gold biters, nippers, and grinders grimace—the darkness evaporated.
“So far,” he said, and headed off into the woods. “So far,” he shouted back over his shoulder.
“If he wants a sacrifice, why don’t we give him the Tacks-man? Two with one stone,” Caraway said.
Tom seemed to like the idea of giving up the Tacks-man to Grimmun, but then answered, “Sacrificing the ones you don’t like, is all very well, but that ain’t no real sacrifice. Grimmun’ll know he’s done you a favor, and then, you’ll owe him more. We’ve got a week, and if we haven’t got him out by then…”
§
Caraway saw Lucke looking at the old mould mound of Seven Kings Sleeping. She saw Lucke digging down.
She made her way over and asked, “What you digging for Mr. Lucke?”
“For the Wulfer,” he pointed at the barrow. “Bones,” said Lucke, “the smell of the old bones’ll get him back.”
It was only a small hole: Caraway could see a few worms and some pale roots coiled among rocks.
“Can you crawl inside?” he said. “See if you can get a bone out?”
There was room for a little ‘un. Caraway landed in the dust and darkness; she could feel the soil all dry and sandy between her fingers. It was cozy and warm away from the winter down in the tump. She groped her way into a passageway. Caraway gave Ratter a soft kick to move him on faster. She must have walked a mile in the dark. It was getting hot, and a blue glow showed up ahead so she could make out some coils and curves carved into the rocks around her.
She came out in a big stone room where men with long dark hair slept around a big stone table. They were wrapped in grey cobwebbed coats snoring and dreaming. There were stars shining off their foreheads and there was food set in front of them. An old man sat among the food wearing a long grey wig coiled about his body; wearing nothing but his wig-tails. He was weaving cobwebs—finely spun and twisted and knotted from the thinnest fibres. They stuck to every surface binding and entwining and coating the kings.
“Are you looking for me? Did Mistress Whipple send you?” he asked.
“Mr. Lucke sent me down for a bone.”
“Bone? I could let you have one for a fee, I suppose.”
Mr. Whipple picked up a lump of yellow cheese and took a big bite. He broke off a crumb and offered it to a spider than scurried out from his wig.
“Tasty m’lud?”
The spider just bounced up and down on its eight legs, grabbed the piece of cheese and scurried back.
“Are you coming back with me, Mr. Whipple? I’m sure I’ll need help getting out,” said Caraway.
“I stay here to keep the Kings in check, to bind them under the webs of the Greylaw to keep the Dreamlaw at bay.”
“What’s the Dreamlaw, Mr. Whipple?”
“Shh, it’s a secret, you’ll wake them,” he answered.
One of the seven around the table muttered, “I am an eagle swooping low over endless grassland.”
A second said, “I fly a white owl in the eternal darkness.”
A third said, “I am a swan on a lake of stars.”
The others were a magpie in a tower, a skylark falling in the void, a sacred ibis, and a gull over the green sea.
Master Whipple said, “Just hold this thread for me.”
The cobweb was composed of thin grey text of surprising density and stickyness. Caraway started to read: “under the precedent of the judgement of Justice Polisher in the case of Scraggins vs. Copral, in the second role of judgement Justice Polisher amended the legal basis of reason and weighting in the uberdivision of the third demesne of the hypothicated nomenclature of the tenacity thus...”
She felt her eyelids sag, sapped of life, they rolled limp and flaccid over her eyes.
She dreamed that she flew a moth in the night.
There was a howl. Ratter was at Master Whipple. Caraway’s eyelids unstuck themselves and she found herself bound in the grey webs he wove from the split hairs. She tore the adhesive bindings from her arms and legged it back, calling for Lucke.
There was a terrible screaming behind her.
Caraway could see the green eyes of Ratter following. She could see a pinlight of day up ahead. As she scrambled up, the earth ran down and the daylight at the top shimmered in the dust. She caught a stick, but it was smoother than a stick and heavier than a stick. She shouted for Lucke and held the stick tight. A rope came down, and she held on as he hauled her up.
“Well done,” he said. “A bone.”
Lucke said, “You take that bone to the Elderwoods and see if you can tempt Wulfer back.”
§
On the Fourth Day, Caraway wandered: calling and whistling for the Wulfer. She was doing it quiet in case he actually came. Caraway looked in the Elderwoods where the trees were frozen to the pith. Caraway looked on the grey clouded heights. Caraway called beneath dark-bellied snow clouds. She called on that high stone table and sniffed the frosty air for the spoor of the Wulfer.
There was no hint of him.
Ratter hid behind a shrivelled clump of mushrooms. His green eyes shone as he laid himself pancake-flat on the ground. There was something in the undergrowth.
A bright tailed Mudpecker broke cover, but too late for Ratter. He launched himself and flew silent though the air.
The long claws tore and small sharp teeth razored through the birdflesh like Grimblades through a sacrifice. He sucked it down whole.
On the way home, Caraway saw Mr. Lucitus and Tom Vander. They were there looking in a book.
“Just how many victims does it say he has to have?” asked Mr. Lucitus.
“All of them,” said Tom Vander, “all of them.”
§
On the fifth day, to her relief. Caraway still had no luck finding the Wulfer.
The smell of apple strudel drew her out as it came up through valley. She let her nose lead her and she passed the old scarecrow which stood on the Spatt. It wasn’t a good scarecrow. An unscared crow sat on its hat. It poked its worm eaten beak from beneath a wing and called at her.
Ratter eyed the crow with a mean green eye and yowled up at it.
The crow flew up showering with pine needles. It came to rest on a dead bare spruce branch and cackled at Ratter.
When they got home, Ratter climbed onto the boiler shed roof and practiced jumping down. Caraway ate her strudel.
§
On the sixth day, Ratter had graduated to jumping from the windows of Mr. Lucitus’s tower.
Caraway saw Ezzy on the old mound pouring milk onto the turf. “Why you spilling milk. Miss Ezz?” she said.
“There’s seven kings waiting for fresh milk. Seven kings sleeping beneath the little green hill all waiting for me.”
Caraway felt a bit guilty knowing they were a bone less than seven.
§
On the seventh day, Caraway climbed up the cliffs, and Ratter followed. In the deep woods, there were skeleton escapements dancing and grinding teeth of bright brass and shivering their bones of laceworked metal. She didn’t like them, so she went home. Caraway came back down the stone-face when Ratter fell past her. Ratter dropped silent and slow-motioned from the rocks, his legs coiled like spring-traps around a rock-pigeon in flight and the two of them fell in a cascade of feathers.
Ratter picked himself up and licked the gizzards and gore from his lips and slipped off among the shiny leaves of an ornamental laurel.
§
Wednesday next, the Raven Tree was grey against the snow that had fallen in the night, and the old crow sat in its branches shivering and quivering.
Ratter caught a rat in the yard and dragged it off towards the boiler shed for breakfast.
On Seven Kings Sleeping, Caraway saw Ezzy with her jug. She poured milk onto the ground again. She looked up a bit sharp over the gold rimmed glasses.
Caraway’s bag gave a shake.
“Someone wants a word with you.”
“Who?”
“He says you have his upper leg.”
The ground began to quiver and eight white shoots started to wriggle up through the snow. The shoots became fingers that tore back the frozen turf. A rather yellow skull looked out from the grass covered in abundant snails of the genus Cepaea having a good ooze, and a sharaliggo slipped from a socket. A white owl settled out of the air and perched on the skull. A cross looking owl eyeing Caraway with a look of evil yellow fire.
“Oh.”
“What you doing with my leg?”
“We needed it to get the Wulfer back.”
“Not keen on dogs. Dogs gnaw on bone. Destructive. Give it back.”
“We need it to get rid of the Grimmun.”
“Why d’you want rid? What’s he done?”
“He wants a sacrifice.”
“Nothing wrong with a nice sacrifice, nice drink of sacrifice from the cows keeps your teeth strong.”
“Full of calcium,” said another king popping his yellow skull out, showing a full set of white teeth, a swan alighting beside him.
“I don’t think he has teeth, not his own grown ones.”
“Better give him some milk.”
“He don’t want milk, he wants people,” Caraway said.
“Ain’t no way to behave, we never sacrificed people.”
“Not much.”
“Not unless they did us wrong,” said the King with the owl, which pointedly eyed Caraway and scratched at the frosty ground with a scimitar talon.
She tossed the leg-bone back. A thin arm dressed in grave rags reached out to catch it in its finger-bones and sank back into the ground.
The birds snorted, hissed and piped according to their species and rose up into the white air. All hope of the Wulfer’s return gone with them. It was a relief.
Caraway ran through the fierce frost that gripped the valley. She nearly ran into the Grimmun walking down the Burdhaze road, a tall old scarecrow in a big battered old hat, his turnip face hidden in the shadow. He brought out a big timepiece from his pocket and tapped it.
“Grim-clock says times getting on Grim-crow: we’ll feed you soon.”
He paid Caraway no mind but the dark bird floated and swooped and rasped in a dry voice and tried to spear her with its worm gnawed beak. Caraway took shelter in the metal cabin of Mr. Lucitus’s machine.
§
On the Thursday with the ninth full night bearing in, we all assembled in the new grown grove. He’d hung the branches with sharp steel hooks, and the Grimstone towered high in the field making a black shadow in the wintery sky.
He stood there sharpening the Grimblades.
“Where’s the victims?” he said, looking grim.
He looked down at Caraway with his shadow face. There could have been empty skull sockets concealed in that umbral shadow. There could have been nothing at all hidden in the deep shade.
His mouth bittered up as if he had a bite of a crab-apple.
“I have swung in the windy tree, and under the Grimlaw you will owe me the victims, tomorrow. My soul has suffered; those grim cold nights alone in the windy tree. How could you leave me swinging there all alone? You are cruel and bad and you all owe me. You all owe me so much. Everything.”
The old crow on his hat swayed and cawed in approval.
Six-foot-eight-in-his-socks, Tom Vander stepped forwards. He held a machine saw in his hand.
He looked up straight into the Grimmun’s eye-area. “I defy you Grimmun, I defy you with the honest steel of a good honest chainsaw.”
“You’ll owe me if you lose,” said the Grimmun.
“Your magic cannot triumph over an honest man.”
“You’re not a virgin are you?” said the Grimmun.
“I am indeed pure of heart, body, and mind,” said Tom Vander. “And you cannot triumph over an honest man who is pure of heart, body and mind armed with the honest steel of a good honest chainsaw.”
“’Course I can, I was just curious,” said Grimmun, popping a snail and throwing it to the bad old crow. “What shall it be Tom Vander? The hooking? The hanging? The slitting? The skinning?” said a grim mouthful of shiny metal teeth.
Mrs. Waldice said, “I think you should run now, Tom.”
“Wait,” said Ezzy stepping forward. Ezzy had a wind-up book of her own, and she turned the little gold key.
“Do you dream at all, Mr. Grimmun?”
The Grimmun’s mouth grimmed up as if he was sucking a bitter-berry.
“For nine full nights…” he began.
The book tinkled and trilled, and Ezz sang: its pages fluttered like moth wings and shadowy figures danced round and round the grove in clockwork steps. They shimmered like a mirage. Dream people marching in circles. Each drew a shimmering Dreamblade of gold and spread Dreamdust over everything. They flew in dreaming silence sort of very slow, but also very swift across the grove, spreading great rings of violet Dreamfire.
Grimmun placed his own book carefully on the ground.
The Book of the Grimlaw opened wide its pages so Caraway could see the precision meshed gears and pinions whirring together in the calligraphy.
There was a sucking noise. A wind ruffled Caraway’s hair, then a gust untidied it, then a blast blew them all off their feet. The Dreambook was sucked out of Ezzy’s fingers and down into the dark jaws of the Grimlaw. Its cover snapped shut and it whirred a while then ejected a pile of shredded paper.
The crow sat in a branch and cackled. It raised its moth-chewed wings and its black beads sparkled.
The Grimmun reached down and retrieved the Book of the Grimlaw.
“What shall it be Ezzy? What shall it be, victim number two? The hooking? The hanging? The slitting? The skinning?” said a grim mouthful of biters, nippers, and grinders. The crow settled back on the hat and cackled down at Ezzy. It opened wide its beak and poured out a torrent of laughter. It teetered on the brim of the hat and hooted. It fell flat on its back helpless with wicked glee.
It was the chance Ratter had waited for. He dropped silently from the top of the tree. He landed hard on the crow with his back snaking and his tail chasing around the battered old hat; his eyes shone with green hunger. The crow in the grey hood struggled to right itself, tried to squawk, but Ratter was too quick and black feathers fell as he caught its throat with his full set: with biters, nippers, and slicers. The crow in the grey hood’s song was silenced by the rat-trap grip of the teeth. It fluttered and fought and the two of them tumbled off the Grimmun’s head onto the Book of the Grimlaw knocking it out of the Grimmun’s hands.
“Oh dear, the poor crow,” said Miss Ezz, who was soft-hearted in these matters. “But I suppose its nature’s way,” she added, being of a pragmatic turn of mind.
Grimmun’s face had seized up.
Ratter sucked and licked bits of dead crow from the Book of the Grimlaw which did not sound well. It rattled, there was an awful grinding and the snap and squeal of collapsing clockwork, the tearing of paper, the sighs and shrieks and curses of dying words.
Grimmun backed away from Sweet-Caraway Hisop. His mouth turning down so deep she thought his jaw was going to snap. “You broke it…
…You…
… broke…
…the Grimlaw.”
Lucke nodded and brought a muddy boot hard down on the Grimmun’s book. Caraway felt a pain in her head, but not the noise as hidden gears wound down, stopping the thin winter sun in its tracks.
The Grimmun ascended the valley like a bad-luck mucked-up winter fog. Holding down the broad brim of his wrinkled whale skin hat so the shadow mask remained over his eyes.
Or where his eyes should be.
Grimmun tumbled up the hill and somersaulted backwards over Mr. Lucitus’s machine in an awful hurry. Caraway saw him pull out the Grimlaw Stone like a rotten tooth and carry it across the corn-stalk stubbled Longfield, and then he marched up past the gnarled crouch of the Raven Tree fuming like a stove pipe. A pair of green cat eyes watched from deep in the hole in the Raven’s crouch.
Grimmun jumped backwards onto the forty-eight bus and left the valley of Whipple’s Po for good.
They hoped.