Page 53 of Hansel and Gerhardt
“Sit,” came the voice from the head of the table. A voice he knew well. Too well.
Hansel stumbled back, sliding along the wall to the corner of the room, where he shrank, even as Gerhardt returned to his seat obediently, head low, shoulders stooped, as if awaiting the whip. For there he was. Their father, red faced, red eyed, all unholy and unrestrained hatred.
“Sit!” he shouted.
Hansel’s two shaking hands covered his mouth, and he ripped his eyes from the angry face, searching the room. Candy, lollies, everywhere, on every surface, bright and cheerful. He was in the candy house. He had escaped. He had!
He looked again, but it was only Herr Candy, watching him now with even more pronounced disgust written in his wrinkled mouth. “Is he always like this?”
Gerhardt, chewing, chewing, “Always. A coward and an oaf.”
Herr Candy crawled a hand across to take Gerhardt’s. “Now, now. Do you think we should be kind? He is, after all, rather simple.”
Gerhardt gave a heavy sigh and nodded his head, as if conceding a hard-won point.
“You there, in the corner,” called Herr Candy. “Why don’t you stand up and come join us?”
“No,” whispered Hansel. “No. Please, just let us leave.”
Herr Candy’s head fell to the side, and he tsked his tongue. “Why, you can leave any time you like. The door’s right behind you.”
Slowly, pulse screaming, neck throbbing, Hansel turned his head, and there, clear as day, was the back door of the cottage. He could see straight through the glass and into the moonlit night.
“But,” said Herr Candy, “I don’t think your brother wants to leave just yet. And I don’t think you should try to make him.”
Hansel’s broken heart wrung itself. The way Gerhardt had attacked him just now. Not just physically. His words hurt so much more, and they bound him. He didn’t dare reach for him, try to drag him through that doorway. Not least because Hansel didn’t believe for a second the doorway would really remain if he tried to. It was all part of the same sick hallucination that had brought his father before them, that Gerhardt was somehow lost in.
“These things you’re seeing, thinking…” Herr Candy said softly, as though reading his mind. “Perhaps they are all just figments of a starved imagination. Eat, and I promise, you’ll feel better.”
“Eat,” said Gerhardt, glaring over his shoulder. “Eat. Then maybe I’ll forgive you for being such an uncivilised brute.”
“Just eat,” said Herr Candy, pouring thick cream over Gerhardt’s cake.
Hansel made no sound.
No movement.
He only sat on the floor and waited for the excruciating meal to be over.
Enveloped by Evil
It felt like hours Herr Candy sat there waffling about nothing at all, pushing one dessert then another on Gerhardt, all while Gerhardt listened in that half-attentive, half-dreaming way. Hansel wondered if he heard any of it. He wondered if Herr Candy cared whether he heard it or not.
He still couldn’t discern the man’s game. Why do any of it? The man had everything he needed. He could conjure food. He had a large and beautiful house. Why do this to Gerhardt? And why, all night, had he been so insistent Hansel should join them?
Hansel had stopped arguing long ago. He’d stopped replying altogether. But when they finally made their way upstairs, Hansel stuck close.
Herr Candy walked Gerhardt directly to his room and held the door open for him. For a moment, it looked as though he were inclined to follow Gerhardt in.
Despite whatever the risk may have been to himself, Hansel stepped forward. He reached past him and pulled the door closed without so much as a look at Gerhardt.
Herr Candy’s body slackened, from that of an elegant dinner host, to that of a fiend. “Sleep tight, Gerhardt,” he called through the door. He spared Hansel one long and menacing stare, then sauntered up the long hall to his own room. The door snapped shut with a jarring thump.
Hansel waited there, catching his breath. He felt strangely guilty, as though he’d done something wrong, or was about to.
He tried Gerhardt’s door.
Locked.
