Down and back up, and Hansel smiled. Down and back up, and Hansel smiled. Down and back up, and the demons were pulling him out of the pit.
“What’s wrong with this one?” one of them said, and poked him with his pitchfork. Hansel winced but did not make a sound.
“Better take him to the Devil himself,” the other demon said. “See what’s to be done.”
So they took him down another burning path. Hansel’s brief sense of triumph was swallowed like a coin slipping into the great dark maw of a well. The Devil himself.
Soon they came to a place where the pits of fire ended, and there began what looked like a quiet, residential neighborhood. They turned on to a wide street, with grass and trees and bushes—but red grass and black trees and red bushes—until they came to a little house with a black picket fence and red walls and black shutters. The demons pushed Hansel to the door. “Go see him,” they said. “See if you don’t scream then.”
They turned away. “I hope we get a screamer next time,” one said.
“Yeah,” said the other. “That was freaky.”
Hansel stood before the door. It was black, like the Gates of Hell, but it was quaint, too, with a knocker that looked like the bronzed head of a kitten. Hansel looked at the knocker more closely. The whiskers were real. It was the bronzed head of a kitten.
Avoiding the knocker, Hansel rapped very quietly on the door. No one answered. Cautiously, he leaned his head against it and listened.
Screams—terrible screams, much worse even than those of the sinners in the pits of fire—echoed from inside. Hansel’s blood shivered in his veins. “Do it,” he told himself. “Do it now.” He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.
Hansel found himself in a living room—sort of like a normal living room. It had a couch before a fire, a wingback armchair, side tables, candles to read by, and a thick rug. But it stank—of sweat and body odor and sulfur all mixed together—it stank so much that Hansel nearly gagged, and was forced to hold his nose and cover his mouth. He looked more closely at the wingback chair. It wasn’t leather. It was human skin. Hansel could see teeth sticking out from one of the seams. He clamped his hand over his mouth more tightly to prevent himself from throwing up.
The screams were coming from the adjoining room. Carefully, Hansel crept up to the edge of the couch. It was made of hair. Human hair. He tried not to think about it. Hidden behind the couch, he could see into the next room. It was the kitchen. In it he saw an old Devil-woman, with a pot and a pan in each hand, cooking and singing. Not screaming. That noise was singing.
Just then, Hansel heard the creaking sound of footsteps on the stairs that led up to the front door. He looked around frantically for a place to hide. His eyes fell on a closet. He ran to it and slipped inside, closing the door quietly behind him. Just then, he heard the Devil’s voice.
“Grandmother, I’m home!”
The screaming-singing in the kitchen stopped. “Dinner’s ready, my dear.” And now Hansel could hear the sound of a table being set.
The Devil helped set the table (for even the Devil helps his grandmother set the table). He stopped and sniffed the air. “Do I smell human flesh?” he asked.
Hansel caught his breath.
“Of course, silly,” his grandmother said. “There’s a little boy named Hansel, waiting for you in the closet in the living room.”
No, she didn’t say that. I was just teasing you.
“Of course, silly,” his grandmother actually said. “What do you think we’re having for dinner?” And they sat down and ate.
Hansel sat in the dark of the closet—surrounded by extra blankets and pillows (he refused to look at what they were made of)—and waited. The Devil ate the supper that his grandmother had made for him—the fingers of sinners, spiced with their guilty tears—and then he yawned loudly.
“Tired from all your wicked trickery?” his grandmother said indulgently. “Come and lie down. You can put your head in my lap, and I’ll stroke your beautiful golden hair.”
The Devil removed his long traveling coat, took off his spectacles and laid them on a side table, and curled up on the rug in the center of the living room, laying his head in his grandmother’s lap. She gently stroked his hair. “Sleep now,” she said. “Sleep.” Soon he was snoring. After a little while, the grandmother was, too.
Hansel sat there in the dark closet, listening to them snore. Suddenly, he realized this was his chance. Hadn’t the old man said that it only required three golden hairs from the Devil’s head to escape this place? Carefully, he opened the door of the closet and tiptoed over to where the Devil was sleeping. Ever so gingerly, Hansel reached out and took ...
A golden hair from the Devil’s head.
That’s what he’s going to take, right?
Right?
Wrong! Are you crazy? The Devil would wake up immediately! And then it would be all over for Hansel, forever and ever and ever.
I hope that’s not what you thought Hansel was going to do. If you did,
Hansel reached out and took the Devil’s spectacles from the side table, retreated with them to the closet, and closed the door again. Then he waited there all night.
The next morning, the Devil arose and readied himself for another day of soul-collecting. His grandmother made him a breakfast of human fingernails—scrambled, of course—and packed up his lunch in a bag.
But before he left, the Devil announced that he could not find his glasses. He was furious, for he could barely see without them. “I hardly recognize you, Grandmother!” he shouted. “Where in Hell did I put them?”
“Devil knows!” his grandmother said.
“No, he doesn’t!” he shouted. Eventually he stormed out of the house without his glasses, grumbling about telling one sinner from another and wasting a perfectly good day of damnation.
After he was gone, the grandmother went upstairs. Hansel ever so carefully opened the door to the closet. He peered up the stairs. The grandmother was carrying things to the attic. Hansel watched her carry an armload of objects up the stairs—including a crown with a head still attached to it, and something that looked like a squid—and come back down empty-handed. She did it again—this time carrying two giant feet. When she came back down, she was sweating from the heat and strain. She itched her gray hair and then took it off. Hansel grimaced at the scabby, bald head underneath. She disappeared into a room and reemerged without her hair at all, carrying instead a taxidermied child with a lollipop in his nose. As she turned for the attic, Hansel took a deep breath, and he followed her up.
Each of his steps on the stairs made a loud creak, causing him to wince and suck in his breath. But the Devil’s grandmother was “singing” again, and she couldn’t hear a thing. When she disappeared through the door of the attic, Hansel hurried up after her. She was half buried in boxes and strange objects when he quietly shut the door behind her. To his amazement, relief, and glee, there was a key in the attic door. He turned it in the lock and went back downstairs.
Hansel soon heard frantic banging on the attic door. Then the grandmother began shouting for help. But no one was around to hear. After a lot of banging and shouting, the grandmother seemed to resign herself to a day in
