Mary Mary Quite Contrary ( A Grimm Diaries Prequel #5 ) Read online

  At the age of six, her parents banished the little child to a tower in the castle where no one could interact with her. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. She wasn’t walking around with fangs, biting every prince she met like Snow White did – Elizabeth’s story happened way before that, but Snow White was always unforgettable.

  As a child, Elizabeth drowned mice in a bucket of water, watching them die with a grin on her face. She nailed cats to the wall, letting them dangle like souvenirs. She pasted animals in honey and sent them out to the bees, and watched them being stung to death. She once buried one of her pets that didn’t abide by her rules in the freezing winter snow.

  Elizabeth’s grandfather and uncle were Voivods of Transylvania – which was part of Hungary at the time. Voivods were the highest ranking officials in the land. Elizabeth’s evil had to be buried with her, or her family would have faced scandals. It was her mom who refused to kill her and convinced the family to banish the child to the tower until they found a cure for her by high warlock or wizard.

  None of them knew she was possessed by a splinter of the mirror. And I wouldn’t tell them. What was the fun in that?

  When Elizabeth became fourteen, she started to act more sane and polite. The progress – and healing – were sudden but appreciated by her parents. Her father visited her and told her about a Hungarian nobleman who wanted to marry her. Outside of her family, people were told that that Elizabeth had been sent to study in Vienna. In reality, her mother had sent her teachers in her exile so the story would prove to be true when the day came and Elizabeth was cured.

  I couldn’t let such a precious gem of evil turn to goodness overnight. I had spent so many years observing Elizabeth to know the secret of the mirror. I thought that the owner of the mirror might come and collect the splinters, and I could finally know who was behind this genius evil. Watching Elizabeth, I thought that her darkness could teach me the art of the mirror. But none of that happened, and she was about to get married, abandoning the evil inside – there was a possibility that she was just fooling them to get out of the castle and spread her evil to the world, but I couldn’t risk that.

  One day, I watched one of Elizabeth’s teachers seduce her. She was too young for that, which made me enjoy the show even better. Evil is my business and it was looking good. The teacher – who was a peasant disguised as a teacher – impregnated her, and vanished. At fourteen, Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter. Her parent wanted to be done with it – just deliver the baby and send it away or kill it. They still wanted Elizabeth to marry the Noble Hungarian a year or two later.

  But I was happy about the baby daughter. I believed that Elizabeth would pass the darkness inside her to the baby. Later I could make Rumpelstiltskin steal her for me so I can still get the secret of the mirror one day.

  Rumpelstiltskin did a great job, convincing the family that they wouldn’t want their granddaughter to be a peasant’s daughter, and he promised them some shiny golden eggs in exchange for the child. Elizabeth’s parents agreed and gave up on their grandchild. Typical ruthless and greedy humans.

  Humans, in their most common attitude, can perform the scariest, most unethical, and malicious things, and then insist on calling me the bad guy.

  A year later, Elizabeth married the nobleman and went to live with him in another huge castle where she became a prestigious countess. She did not care for her child. She did not care for the peasant who had impregnated her. That was when I was sure that she was still possessed by the splinter of the mirror. She only fooled them to get her life back. She looked like she had a plan to me. A plan to deliver Evil upon the world.

  While Elizabeth became a powerful countess, Rumpelstiltskin sent Mary, her daughter, to be raised by another poor family, a caring stepmother and a devious stepfather who beat her frequently when she grew up. Mary grew to be incredibly beautiful, to an extent that had me wondering what her mysterious father looked like. Elizabeth was beautiful as well, but Mary didn’t have her mother’s features.

  Mary’s beauty was a curse. Her stepfather’s eyes turned wolfish while she grew into a ripe teenager, and the boys either chased or bullied her for not submitting to their desires. From my humble experience, some beautiful girls ended up living an ugly life; ugly as the color and fabric of the poor, torn dresses she wore on her tender skin. Eventually, Mary fled, escaping an imminent darker future at the age of sixteen. She ran into the woods and was never seen by the peasants again.

  Somehow, even I couldn’t find her. So I had to go back, watching the countess.

  Elizabeth’s husband was almost always away, fighting the Ottomans in the battlefields. Exhausted, he buried himself in her arms when he returned home, not knowing that his wife’s arms dug graves of those she had been inflicting and torturing while he was away. Elizabeth’s husband’s absence was a time she just cherished. It allowed her to shine on with the darkness she possessed. I could see that evil in her silvery eyes; that last splinter of the mirror, gleaming discreetly in the moonlight.

  Every night her husband woke up screaming from the nightmares he had about the war, about men killing other men, and when hungry, cannibalizing on their rotten flesh and drinking their blood. War was a feast for gore, no matter who won in the end. As I said before, I didn’t cause this. You’d be amazed at the evil people are capable of doing by themselves.

  Why not kill and steal when you could always blame it on me in the end? Devil made me do this. Devil made me do that. Blah bah blah.

  Elizabeth was deviously smart. She confessed to her husband about her torture sessions, and told him about how she enjoyed them. She persuaded him that if he shared her hobby with her, he would feel better and free himself from the guilt about his soldiers dying for nothing in war.

  Listening to her from behind the curtain in their bedroom, I wanted to clap and salute her. I might have danced the Polka with her. Why wasn’t she working for me? Oh, yes. She was possessed by a mirror that insinuated evil like I could’ve never dreamed of.

  Her husband joined in and they became the perfect couple. Every time he rode back to war, he had a vicious appetite to kill and conquer. And every time he came back to her, he enjoyed watching her kidnap and torture poor peasants from the valley. But as much as Elizabeth liked to pin needles in her victims’ bodies, burn them alive, and slice them to pieces, her husband seemed to want more. That was the moment when he leapt out of the bathtub, and ran naked through the streets of Vienna, shouting that he had found what he was looking for. It was a genuine Archimedes moment – if you don’t know what an Archimedes moment is then you really don’t know much about science or the amount of fun you can have in a bathtub.

  Elizabeth’s husband had figured out how to turn her torturing into a historical fun fiesta. He started inventing torture devices, inspired by the way they tortured the enemy soldiers in war. A couple of centuries later, these instruments became so famous that they were mentioned in one of the most loved nursery rhymes, but I’ll get to that later on.

  Elizabeth’s husband’s first birthday gift was one of these instruments: a tool that crushed the thumb with the tightening of a screw – a nasty piece of art that I later recommended to Adolf Hitler in World War Two – of course, the bastard took my advice. Elizabeth called it the Silver Bells for it was made of pure silver and she thought it was easy to use like ringing a bell.

  Her husband also noticed that she had an obsession with hurting her victims in the genitals, so he invented another instrument which she had called Cockleshells. I’d leave it to your imagination to think of what it did. Even I thought it was too extreme. The instrument’s name was self- explanatory.

  This thirty-something Elizabeth definitely had issues. She needed an Alienist – which was the name they used at the time for psychiatrist, given that a crazy person was alienated from real and sane life.

  Lastly, her husband invents the guillotine, which they nicknamed the Maiden because it was usually used on maidens. Elizabeth h
ad a knack for torturing girls more than boys – unlike me. I am not a sexist, I love to burn them all.

  I decided I couldn’t bring myself to watch their happily-married torturing sessions anymore. But I had to see. I had to know what people, possessed by the splinter of the mirror, could do, and how far they would go. It was obvious by now that no one was coming to collect the splinters from her eyes and heart; that there was no demon that possessed her through the shards. This mirror was pure evil on its own, which puzzled me, really puzzled me. I was not pure evil. I was once an angel after all.

  I spent my days waiting outside in the garden of their castle, but then I had to hide again when they started using the garden to bury the bodies. Day by day, the tortured corpses were piling up six feet under, and the few mistresses and maids who knew about their secrets helped them bury the dead. Some garden, I thought to myself. I wanted to have one like that in Hell.

  Most of their victims were young girls. The maids lured the girls into the castle, claiming the countess was offering jobs. I knew Elizabeth liked to torture peasant girls because they were poor and their parents usually kept their mouths shut, afraid to offend the noble families who ruled the land by asking about their lost girls.

  But why did the peasant girls have to be so young?

  It was two years later when I found out why. Elizabeth’s husband hadn’t returned from war for almost a year. And that, ladies and gentlemen, saints and sinners, was when she started to really step into the dark side of her soul. All that preceded was nothing compared what was in store.

  Elizabeth ordered her maids to fetch her the ripest and most beautiful girls in the land. Young naïve girls visited the castle, enamored by the idea of meeting the beautiful countess and maybe getting a chance to work and support their families. Except that Elizabeth had another destiny mapped out for them.

  After the girls ate and danced for days in the castle, Elizabeth slaughtered them and filled her marble bathtub with their blood, and then… bathed in the young girl’s blood.

  Elizabeth was growing older and the darkness inside her was eating not only her soul, but also her skin and features. There was a price for everything – still is. Just ask me.

  I don’t know where she had gotten the idea from, but bathing in the young virgin’s blood revived her soul and she conjured the youth she had lost with aging.

  Hundreds of girls were tortured then killed to feed the bloodbath. Elizabeth was at the zenith of her darkness, and my attraction and fascination with the mirror grew stronger. I started procrastinating on my jobs in the world. There were people who had to be seduced, cities that had to burned, and wars that had to be started, but I was only interested in Elizabeth Bathory and her bloodbath.

  Historians will tell you many other facts that might contradict mine about her story. But we would agree on one thing: Elizabeth Bathory was the first known serial killer in the world. And yes, it was a woman.

  Year after year, Elizabeth’s husband never returned, and the number of missing, young peasant girls in the land was increasing. Little did they know about Elizabeth’s garden where almost one third of the land’s young girls were buried.

  Parents who had kids in Europe thought twice before visiting Sárvár in Slovakia where Elizabeth now lived in her latter days, in a scary castle called Čachtice. Rumors about demons kidnapping young girls had spread all over Europe. But as dumb as the peasants behaved, they started to smell it, the blood of their daughters, reeking from the castle up the hill.

  One day, Elizabeth took interest in one particular girl that was sent to her by the maids. A girl they had found lost in the woods, and was as beautiful as the rest. Only something about her was different and unexplainable. The sight of that girl made the splinters in Elizabeth’s eye glimmer in red. Elizabeth felt uncomfortable and took extra pleasure, slow and deliberate, in torturing the girl. Elizabeth started with the Silver Bells appetizer, then the cockleshells main dish, and ate dessert to the sound of the girl’s dripping blood, filling the tub.

  But still, as the girl died, Elizabeth felt uncomfortable. She parted the dead girl’s eyelids and stared shockingly into her eyes. There was something shiny in those dead blackened eyes. It was a splinter of a mirror.

  Elizabeth went mad and ordered the maids to burn the girl, but the maid advised her otherwise. The whole land was watching the castle, suspecting Elizabeth to be the demon that killed their daughters. Stirring fire would have raised suspicions. It was better to bury her deep in the garden.

  And they did.

  Then one night, Elizabeth woke up to murmurs outside her bedroom window. She looked outside and saw the girl standing tall as if she hadn’t killed her and bathed in her blood days ago. The girl approached her and wrote her name in blood on the window. It was Mary, Elizabeth’s daughter, and both splinters in their eyes shone in the dark.

  I backed off as I watched them collide. I didn’t know that those who got a splinter in their eyes or hearts were immortal. But now I knew, and I wasn’t comfortable with it. There was another greater force than mine in this world. It was growing and I couldn’t stop it.

  Mary slashed at Elizabeth in her guilty weakness. Although Elizabeth was made of darkness, she was appalled she had killed her own daughter – which didn’t really kill her.

  The more Mary slashed at Elizabeth with her long nails, the more Mary started to look normal and beautiful again. The cycle of doom was bound to never end. To preserve her beauty, Elizabeth had to kill and bathe in the young girls’ blood. And for Mary to look normal, she had to come and slash her mother every night. I thought it was Merry Go Round. Now, I learned it was Mary Go Round.

  One happy family, I must say. Even my family wasn’t that fucked up. Oh. Wait. I didn’t actually have a family, but they wouldn’t have been that bad, would they?

  Mary didn’t age, and she needed to kill and hurt other people in order for her to stay alive. It turned out she didn’t just have to hurt her mother, but other young girls and boys.

  Finally, Elizabeth Bathory was convicted of her murders and sentenced for life in her own castle. Parents of the dead daughters were allowed to visit her and hurt her with the same tools on holidays – I am not going to comment on that now. I will stick to that smug smile on my face.

  But the poor parents couldn’t do it, so Mary visited her every night and bestowed wrath upon her. She tortured her mother with Silver Bells, Cockleshells. All of this mess was because of the splinter which they didn’t know existed in their eyes.

  Well, I knew. But I wasn’t really fond of happy endings. Happy beginnings? Yes. But always leave the endings for me.

  Even though Mary was darkness itself, the peasant kids loved her for avenging their sisters, cousins, and girlfriends buried in Elizabeth’s garden. They even made a nursery rhyme for Mary, one that they danced and jumped rope to. It sounded like this:

  Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

  How does your garden grow?

  With silver bells, and cockle shells,

  And pretty maids all in a row.

  When I think of it right now, the song made sense. They mentioned the Silvers Bells, the Cockle Shells, and even the garden where Mary and the girls were once buried. I wasn’t really sure about what they meant with pretty maids. Was it a reference to the Maiden, or to the pretty girls whose blood Elizabeth bathed in?

  But years later, I realized that Mary was a danger to me. The amount of chaos she caused in the world was conflicting with my plans. It’s true that I liked the badass evil in her, but only if she had worked for me, which I knew was impossible. She was much darker and stronger than my wicked self. I didn’t even want to introduce myself to her or let her know about me. Especially, when years went by and I couldn’t learn what the source of that splinter in her eyes was. Just to be clear on how evil she is, you should know that she was the one who convinced Hitler to destroy the world, appearing to him through a secret mirror he had in his room. That’s why no one knew where Hitler’s
body really was. When he failed making mashed potatoes out of the rest of the world, she punished him by pulling him into the mirror with her.

  I also found out that I was never going to be able to remove the splinters from Mary’s eyes, because I couldn’t come near her. I had to find a way to kill her though, or at least, curse her.

  The boys and girls in Hell were of no use to me. I had banned Peter Pan from Hell at the time for rebelling against me, and refusing to grow up and work for me. He had also convinced some of my students – mostly young boys – to leave Hell and come with him to a silly place he had discovered – or imagined. He called it Neverland, and his followers called themselves the Lost Boys.

  It puzzled me why Peter wanted me as his enemy when I raised him and spoiled him in my Scholomance school. But I was intrigued nonetheless. He insisted on abandoning Hell but it seemed he had no sweet spot for Heaven nonetheless. What was that all about, Pete?

  But enough with the boy who wouldn’t’ want to grow up. I am writing this to tell you about Mary, and about her role in the fairy tale world. Things that the Brothers Grimm didn’t want you to know.

  I don’t blame them. You’ve seen how many of the characters were messed up so far.

  In my quest to destroy Mary who was possessed by the splinter of a crashed mirror, I heard about how Gerda saved her friend Kai and removed the splinter. But I couldn’t come near them. They were protected by a higher rank in the wizard world so that I couldn’t come near them. And they hated my guts. Who didn’t?

  I thought help from Death itself, a giggly, enchanting lady who lived alone in the forest with her Death-to-be young daughter. But Death was busy. Getting older, she was preparing her sixteen-year-old daughter to take over soon. I loved this family. Like really loved them. They knew how to slaughter with a smile on their faces.

  So no help from Peter, or Death, I tried to persuade a young vampire called Wendy Darling, whom people loved to call Sleeping Beauty, to help me get rid of Mary Mary Quite Contrary. Unexpectedly, Sleeping Beauty reminded me of something really bad I had done to her in the past. The shit I did to people always came back to me. Sometimes, I felt like the boy who cried wolf. It didn’t matter how loud he cried. No one was coming for help anymore.