Grogo the Goblin

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  Sean tried to snap his fingers. "That's from Firesign Theater."

  Clayton shook his head. "I never reveal my sources."

  "You lousy bums," Schilder muttered, and then he saw Dorcas and Peter standing in the doorway. "You, young fella. I tink maybe you're right about de river. I vote against de factory. Ve save de river for de fishes."

  Peter blinked in surprise, and then smiled broadly. "Hey, that's great, that's great! Thanks a lot!"

  "I don't do it for you," Schilder responded, refusing to be amicable. "I do it for de fishes."

  "It don't matter what you do," Clayton said. He was sitting on the ground with his arms and legs wrapped around the big old jug he and Sean had discovered. "I own this place, not you or the fucking town." He started to giggle idiotically, singing, "This land is my land, and it sure ain't your land. . . ."

  Schilder glowered at him and then turned to Dorcas. "Child, come here. I gotta talk to you."

  Dorcas walked down the four porch steps. "What is it, Mr. Schilder?"

  "Not here, not vit dese drunken bums," he muttered. "Follow me. I gotta show you someting."

  Dorcas had known Johann Schilder all her life, and while he had always been a generally curmudgeonly gadfly, he had never been other than kind to her, as kind as was possible for him, at least. She followed him a few yards away and then asked again, "What is it?"

  He looked over at the five other young people as if to make certain they were out of earshot, and then he said quietly, "I know vhat happened to you a few veeks ago. I know you tink you saw dat gottverdammte freak in de voods." He paused. "I link maybe you did."

  She stared at him wordlessly for a few moments. "What are you talking about? I know that Vernon is dead. I know what happened here. I know that you people murdered him and Mr. Pantanjali." Her voice was reproachful, but Schilder didn't react to it, so she went on, "I don't understand what you're trying to say."

  "Listen to me, child," he said. "Maybe ve vas wrong about dat gargoyle. I don't know. Maybe ve vas right. Maybe ve should've called de cops, but dat don't matter. Vhat's done is done."

  "But . . ."

  "Nobody stayed behind aftervard," he went on. "Ve all just figgered dey vas dead, and dat vas dat. But I tink maybe dey didn't die." He paused and sighed. "I know for a fact dat de heathen didn't die, and I tink maybe de freak didn't die eidder."

  "Mr. Pantajah is alive!" she exclaimed, and then, with rising excitement, "You mean I did see Vernon? I wasn't going crazy?"

  "I don't know about dat," he said. "Ve hung him pretty good, and he vasn't moving vhen we took him down. But de heathen I find in a cave, over by de foot of de mountain. I find him yesterday vhen I vas hunting deer. He's sick, he's hurt, I tink maybe he dies soon. He tells me he vants to see you, vhat for, I dunno."

  She felt her legs twitching with the urge to begin running into the forest. "Where? Where is he?"

  "Vait a minute, vait a minute," he said irritably. "Now you listen to me. A lot of good people vas here dat day, and maybe ye make a mistake. I don't vant nobody getting in no trouble about dat whole ting, you hear me? I tink maybe ye all just forget about de hanging, forget about de factory, forget about de whole ting vit dese voods. Too many good people maybe get hurt, too many good husbands and fadders."

  She forced herself to be patient. "Mr. Schilder, you're right, what's done is done. I don't want to stir up anything, and I don't want anyone else to get hurt. But if Mr. Patanjali is alive and hurt, we have to help him, now, quickly! Peter and Becky and Lydia can help carry him to—"

  "No, you vait vun minute," he barked. "I tell all dis to you because he asks me to, but I don't trust dem bums over dere, not even your sister. You don't tell nobody about dis, or I don't take you to him."

  "Okay, okay," she said quickly, thinking that once she knew where Ashvarinda was hiding she could get help, no matter what Schilder said. "But let's go to him, please!"

  "All right, all right," he grumbled. "Come on." He started to hobble off into the woods.

  Dorcas turned and called out, "Peter, I'm going somewhere with Mr. Schilder. I'll meet you at the trailer later." She followed after Schilder without waiting for a response.

  Peter made a motion to follow her, and then stopped. I guess she's okay with him, he thought. Harmless old man. She's known him all her life, and he seems to care about her. She might just want to talk to him about her problems. He might be a grandfather figure or something, maybe. . . . He smiled slightly. And what the hell, he cares about the fish!

  As they walked deep into the dark woods Schilder took a flashlight from the pocket of his red hunting coat and switched it on, moving it back and forth in front of him. "I didn't know there were caves around here," Dorcas said.

  "Me neidder," Schilder replied, "but I vas tracking dis buck and I took a shot at him . . . missed . . . my eyes, dey ain't so good no more . . ."

  "Yes?" she said, "And?"

  "And I guess de heathen, he hears de shot and he calls out for help. I follow de voice, and dere is dis cave, right in de mountain, de mouth all covered vit brush."

  "How badly is he hurt?"

  "Bad, he's hurt bad," Schilder said. "He got hit hard in de head, and den he got burned. It's a miracle he lived at all, and he's been in dere for six veeks, hanging on to life. He got some constitution, dat old heathen."

  I have to get him to a hospital, Dorcas thought as they walked onward into the darkness. I don't care who gets in trouble, I don't care who goes to jail, I don't care what happens. . . .

  "Here," Schilder said, breathing heavily from the exertion of the walk. "Dis is de cave. I go in first. Maybe dere's bats or something. Gotta be careful in caves." He entered carefully, stepping over a pile of branches and swinging his flashlight around and examining the interior. The mouth of the cave was just high enough for them to enter without stooping over, but jagged outcrops of rock on the sides made it impossible to walk straight ahead, and Dorcas found herself weaving right and left, scraping her arms on the sides of the narrow passageway.

  A faint light glimmered from around a sharp turn in the passage, and she followed Schilder into what seemed almost like an oval room, a bubble of space in a narrow pathway into the interior of the mountain. Beyond the oval space the passageway again became narrow and wound its irregular way of into the darkness.

  Ashvarinda Patanjali lay upon the cold stone floor of the cave. Beside him burned an old lantern, and a small bucket of water stood beside it. His once-nut-brown skin was a pale gray in those places that were not covered with festering scabs, and his breathing was loud and labored. His eyes were open, but they seemed milky and confused as he turned and looked at Dorcas. It was cold in the cave, not as cold as it was outside in the winter woods, but the temperature well below freezing, and the aged yogi was naked. "You . . . have . . . come . . ." he rasped.

  "My God!" she said, dropping to her knees beside him. "Oh, Jesus!"

  "Listen to me . . ." he said, straining with the effort to speak. "Ey raakshus . . . ey raakshus . . . a . . . a demon . . ."

  "Mr. Patanjali, I'm gonna get you to the hospital. Just try to relax, don't try to talk." She almost tore her jacket from her body and placed it gently over him. "You're gonna be okay, honest, just try to hang on for a little while longer." Over a month, she thought, filled with rage at the people who had done this to the harmless old man, he's been lying here like this for over a month, living on nothing but water. . . .

  She frowned. He can't even move. Where has he been getting the water? And the lantern, where . . . ? Her eyes went wide. "Vernon," she said. "Where's Vernon? Is he alive?"

  "Yes . . ." Ashvarinda whispered. "He . . . is alive ... he pulled me ... from the . . . the fire."

  "Ja, dat's vat I figgered." Schilder nodded. "Now, hurry up vit vhatever you vant to tell de child. Ve got to get away from here."

  "And leave him here like this?" Dorcas shouted. "Leave him here to die like this? What the hell's the matter with you?"

  "List
en to me. . . ." Ashvarinda said slowly and with great difficulty. "The Blessed Lord Vishnu has . . . kept me alive just . . . just long enough . . . just long enough . . . to tell . . . to tell . . . not enough time . . . for final meditation . . . final trance . . . final oblivion."

  "Please, Mr. Patanjali, don't try to talk."

  Ashvarinda reached over with one weak, bony hand and grabbed her wrist. "Listen . . . to . . . me," he said urgently. "I formed . . . a link, a link . . . with my mind . . . my mind to his mind . . . when I die, the link . . . the link will break ... he will know . . . he will know—"

  "Shhh, Mr. Patanjali, please . . ."

  "No time . . . no time ... " he whispered. "Dying . . . dying . . . no time . . . you must say . . . prayer . . . you must pray, each sunrise and each sunset . . . you must pray . . . listen . . . repeat my words."

  "I have to get help—"

  He seemed almost about to weep as he said, "No, no . . . you must repeat my words . . . you must remember them . . . each sunrise and each sunset . . . for the rest of your life."

  "Okay, okay, I'll repeat whatever you say, but then I have to go and get help."

  "You hurry up," Schilder grumbled. "I don't like dis place. I feel like maybe de mountain collapses on me or someting."

  She shot him an angry, almost hateful glance and then turned back to Ashvarinda. "Go on. What do you want me to remember?"

  "Repeat . . . repeat . . ."

  "I will. Hurry, please."

  He took a deep, rattling breath. "Mujey suno bhagawan Vishnu. Repeat . . . repeat it. . . ."

  "Mujey suno . . . what?" Dorcas shook her head. "Mr. Patanjali, I can't just memorize sounds like this. I don't even know what I'm saying. Listen, why don't we get to a hospital, and then, after you're feeling better, we can take our time and—"

  "No!" he said with a firmness seeming to belie his broken state. "There is no time . . . no time." Ashvarinda fought back the urge to weep. "Dorcas, child, you must try . . . you must try . . . I will . . . explain the prayer . . . you must memorize it . . . make it a singsong . . . yes, yes, that will help, a singsong . . . a singsong. . . ."

  She sighed. "Okay, okay. I'll try again."

  "Listen . . ." he said once again, weakly and with trembling voice. "Mujey suno bhagawan Vishnu. Hear me, Lord Vishnu. . .

  "Mujey suno bhagawan Vishnu," she said, trying to imitate his sound and intonation.

  He nodded, and then proceeded with his strange prayer, sentence by sentence, supplication by supplication. Dorcas repeated them as best she could, singing them to the melody of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as an aid to memorization, much as a child learns to sing the ABC's. She had been raised in an environment at least nominally Christian, and she felt uneasy repeating a prayer to a Hindu god; but she forced herself to do it, forced herself to attempt to remember the words. Ashvarinda whispered on and on, and Dorcas sang.

  Mujey suno bhagawan Vishnu. . . .

  Hear me, Lord Vishnu. . . .

  Meyriy muhduhd kuhro, bhagawan Vishnu. . . .

  Help me, Lord Vishnu. . . .

  Meyrey sarey achey kurum, mey aphey upiyog key liyey sumpurn kurthiy hu . . . .

  All my good karma I surrender to you, Lord Vishnu, I surrender it to you for your use. . . .

  Bhagawan, is jan wur ko nirbul buna kur iskiy undr kiy ak ko phor do. . . .

  Lord, weaken the beast and blind his inner eye. . . .

  Sub jiyvit pranyo kiy or sey thumbariy ruksha key liyey vinthiy kurthi hu. . . .

  On behalf of all living things, I beg you to preserve, preserve, preserve. . . .

  A half hour passed as Ashvarinda forced Dorcas to sing the prayer repeatedly. She sang and sang and sang, burning the alien sounds into her mind, and he seemed at last to relax slightly. His body sank down into the cold uneven rock upon which he lay as he whispered, "Every sunrise . . . every sunset . . . never forget . . . always, always. . . ."

  "Yes, Mr. Patanjali, I'll do it, don't worry." I'll say anything to get you to calm down and rest while I go and get help.

  "He will . . . understand . . . when I die . . . if you don't .. . if you don't . . . say the prayer . . . but . . . control . . . trap him . . . trap him . . . make him forget . . . blind him . . . maya . .. maya . . . net of illusion. . . .

  He's delirious, she thought. "I'm going to go now and get help. Try to rest, try to sleep. Mr. Patanjali? Mr. Patanjali?" His eyes had closed and he was motionless. She feared for a moment that he had died, but then she saw his chest rising and falling almost imperceptibly. She got to her feet and turned viciously on Schilder. "What kind of person are you? How could you just leave him here like this? Why in God's name didn't you call a doctor, get him to a hospital, something, anything?"

  "Dat's vhy," he said, pointing behind her into the narrow darkness of the passageway that stretched out beyond the oval room. She looked where he was pointing and then walked forward to the spot where the rock walls came abruptly closer to each other. She squinted into the passage and saw what looked like a body lying on the rocky ground in the darkness. She looked closer.

  It was old Johann Schilder, the back of his head seemingly sheared away, resting in a thick pool of blood.

  She spun around just as the old man who had led her to the cave shrank and twisted into a misshapen, monstrous caricature of the human form.

  "Hi hi hi," said Grogo the Goblin. "Hello!"

  Dorcas began to scream.

  Chapter Eleven

  January 3,1969 (continued)

  When by ten o'clock that evening Dorcas had not shown up at the trailer, Peter and Lydia had gone of in search of her after agreeing to meet the others at around midnight at Alex Brown's bar. They thus left Rebecca to take care of Clayton and Sean, who had shared a bottle of vodka while waiting and were by now in that intermediate state between dead drunk and terribly hung over. Rebecca was neither so subtle nor so kind as to compel them merely to take cold, sobering showers. She preferred more direct action. She took her brother and her boyfriend by the hair, dragged then out of the trailer to the -small pond in the clearing out back, and, after tossing a rock through the thin layer of ice to make certain it would shatter under their weight, pushed them in.

  They were not amused, but they were a bit more sober for the experience. Sean's sobriety, if not his sense of well-being, was involuntarily advanced when he climbed out of the freezing pond, fell to his knees, and vomited so violently that for a moment he thought his stomach would rupture. He crawled forward on the ground, trying to rise to his feet on his rubbery legs. He did not notice that he had crawled beneath a low-hanging branch, and when he finally summoned up the will to stand, he slammed his head into it. It took a scant fifteen minutes for Rebecca to revive him and help him change his clothes. After Clayton had done the same, they left for Alex's bar.

  The drive took them just under thirty minutes. It should have taken them less than half that time, but Clayton drove very slowly, which was his customary gesture to highway safety when he was driving drunk. He had been exercising this responsible caution ever since his friend Marc Rosenblatt killed himself and a family of five while driving under the influence. It was when Clayton watched the police peeling what was left of Marc from the exterior of the other car that Clayton resolved, as a simple matter of self-protection and civic-mindedness, to drive very slowly if he were drinking heavily. He did indeed stray occasionally onto the shoulder or into the left-hand lane of the two-lane mountain road, but he and his passengers were fortunate enough to encounter neither any other motorists nor any trees on the drive from Saunders Mountain down into Beckskill.

  "Becky, I hate your fucking guts," Clayton muttered as he parked down the street from Alex's bar at just after eleven.

  "I don't feel good," Sean added woefully.

  "Serves you both right." Rebecca grinned, delighting in their discomfort. "You guys had a lot of nerve getting all fucked up like that so early. I mean, what were me and Lyd supposed to do when you fell asleep?"

>   "Contemplate the joys of lesbianism," Clayton suggested, yawning and shaking his head to clear it.

  "Good one, Clay," his sister said. "Real funny.

  He took a deep breath and then screamed, "WHOOOOP!"

  Sean jumped. "What the hell are you trying to do, scare me to death?!"

  "Not at all, my boy, not at all," he replied as Rebecca began to laugh. "Just waking myself up." He reached into the backseat and slapped Sean in the face. "Wake up, youngster! The night is still young, and there's a bottle of bourbon in yon tavern with your name on it."

  "Hey, like, fuck you, you know?" Sean muttered, trying to slap him back and missing his face.

  "Hold on, Clay," Rebecca said. "I didn't get him sobered up just so he could get comatose again."

  "Oh, shit, Becky, just look at him, will you? His only hope of survival rests in an immediate alcohol transfusion." As if to illustrate Clayton's point, Sean belched loudly. A stale smell of incipient nausea immediately filled the small interior of the jeep.

  "Oh, Jesus," Rebecca muttered. "Let's get inside, quick, I'm gonna have to get disgustingly drunk myself just to be able to kiss this animal without throwing up."

  "That's the beauty of it," Clayton said. "Even if you do throw up, who's gonna care?"

  Sean peered out the window through bleary eyes. "Where the hell are we?"

  "Don't you know where you are?" Clayton asked, feigning concern. "I think you need a drink to steady yourself."

  "Are we going to Alex's?" Sean muttered. "What the hell for? It's more fun back at the trailer."

  "No," Rebecca said. "We have to meet Pete and Lydia here, remember? We'll just hang out and have a few drinks while we wait for them."

  "Have a few drinks!" Sean whined. "Are you kidding? I just puked my guts up and almost killed myself."

  "I know, I know," Clayton said, frowning and nodding sympathetically. "Terrible experience, terrible. I think you could use a good stiff drink."

  "Hey, forget it, man. I'm going back to the trailer."

  Clayton reached into his pocket and took out the keys to the jeep. He dangled them in front of Sean and asked, "You gonna walk?"