Grogo the Goblin

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  "Tires shouldn't blow out like this," Russell said as he pushed the flat away and rolled the freshly filled spare over to the car. "I read someplace that they've invented a tire which can't go flat, but Goodyear bought the patent just so it would never be manufactured and cut into their profits. General Electric did the same thing with long-burning light bulbs. The whole problem is capitalism." The others did not feel like arguing with him, instead contenting themselves with exchanging tired glances.

  Peter coughed and asked, "Did anyone slip me any acid when I wasn't looking?"

  "No," Nancy replied. "Why would you ask something like that?"

  "Well, if I'm not hallucinating, then you'd better hurry up, Russ."

  "What are you talking about?" Russell asked as he began tightening the lug nuts.

  "Look." Peter pointed up the road behind them. They all looked in the direction he was indicating. "Is that who I think it is?"

  "Can't be," Russell said softly. "He's dead, right?"

  "My point precisely," Peter replied. "He's dead. And unless there are two of him, that's one pretty lively dead goblin walking our way."

  "Shit," Russell muttered, and began working faster.

  "Dork? You okay?" Lydia tapped lightly on the door of her sister's bedroom. She waited a few moments and listened to the sounds of rustling sheets within. The door opened and her sister's tired face appeared before her. God, she looks like shit, Lydia thought. "I just wanted to see if you were feeling okay," she explained.

  Dorcas yawned. "I thought you were with Clayton."

  "I was, and I'm going right back. I borrowed Becky's car. I was like worried about you."

  Dorcas smiled. "I'm okay, Lyd. I feel terrible, but I'm not . . . well, I'm not seeing things."

  "Good." She paused. "You wanna come back with me?"

  "No. I don't think I want to see Clayton again for the rest of my life."

  Lydia appraised her cautiously. "Did you really . . . I mean, what you said about Clay . . ."

  "That's what he said I did," Dorcas replied. "All I know for sure is that when I came to, he was doing it to me."

  Lydia sniffed. "I can't picture you seducing anybody."

  Dorcas laughed sadly. "Thanks."

  "No, no, that's not what I mean. I just well . . . " She frowned and shook her head. "I just don't trust him anymore."

  "Why did you ever?" Dorcas asked. "I don't think he's a very nice boy, Lydia."

  Lydia began to respond when she heard the door of her father's bedroom open. "Oh, wonderful," she muttered.

  "Well." Dr. Ostlich sighed wearily as he stepped out into the hallway, tying his robe. "Thank God you're alive."

  "Dad, not now." Lydia sighed. "It's been a bad night."

  "I'm sure it was," he replied. "Though it wasn't any too good for me either, not being able to sleep all night, wondering if the two of you were lying dead somewhere, like Sarah." He saw Dorcas start to close the door of her room. "Wait, honey, please. I have to talk to you, to both of you. We can't go on this way. Things simply have to change." He frowned when he heard a knock at the front door. "See who that is. And then come right back up here." As Dorcas glumly complied with her father's request he turned back to Lydia and shook his head sadly. "I have just about had it with you, Lydia."

  "You haven't had it with me since Mom killed herself," she spat.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. "That was all in the past, Lydia. I was wrong, I was . . . ill, and I've gotten help. We have to try to put it behind us."

  She laughed bitterly. "Yeah, I'll bet you'd just love to put it behind me."

  He seemed about to weep. "Lydia, please. You simply must forgive me."

  "Forgive you!" She laughed. "Why the hell should I?"

  "Oh, honey, you have to believe that I'm—" Whatever he was about to say was cut off by a horrendous shriek from below. "Dorcas?" he called out. "Dorcas! What's the matter?" Lydia was already halfway down the stairs before he reached the staircase, and he heard his other daughter scream also before he reached the main floor of the house. He rushed into the living room and then stood in mute shock, staring at the bizarre scene before him.

  Lydia and Dorcas were huddled together in the corner, their arms wrapped around each other, screaming at the top of their lungs. The front door was open wide, and standing motionless in the doorway was a skeleton, the rotting burial dress hanging loosely upon its frame and half its skull missing: the half that the shotgun had blasted away when the woman committed suicide five years earlier.

  Ostlich was paralyzed. His feet would not move, and his heart was beating so rapidly that he thought his chest would burst. "What . . . what's the meaning of this?" he asked, his mind denying what his eyes were seeing. "Is this some sort of joke? Lydia, are you responsible for this?"

  It was as if the skeleton had been waiting to hear the sound of his voice, for it now began to shuffle forward into the room. Ostlich jumped back, and Dorcas and Lydia continued to scream.

  One bony hand reached over to the china cabinet beside the door and opened the drawer where Ostlich always kept a loaded revolver. It took out the gun, turned in Ostlich's direction, and began walking toward him.

  Ostlich turned to run, but before he reached the door of his study, he heard the explosion of a gunshot an instant before he felt the burning piece of metal slam into his back. He fell forward onto his face, shuddering from the pain, and rolled over to see the remains of his dead wife standing over him. He tried to speak, but blood came from his mouth, and then the skeleton pointed the gun at his face and emptied it into him.

  The specter turned and walked back to the two terrified girls in the corner. Dorcas's shock and fear were so great that she had not thought to run from the house. Lydia had been thinking of nothing else, but she could not manage to get her feet to move. The creature came close to them and then stopped; and when it lifted its hand to their faces, both girls closed their eyes and waited to die.

  The creature stroked Lydia's hair, touched Dorcas's cheek affectionately, and then walked out of the house.

  They stood motionless in each other's embrace for a long while, until at last Dorcas whimpered, "Did you see that, too?"

  "Yeah," Lydia said, her voice trembling.

  "I'm not going crazy?"

  "Not unless I am, too."

  "Lyd, that wasn't . . . that couldn't have been . . ."

  "That was Mom," Lydia whispered. "What the hell is going on here?"

  "But Mom . . . Mom is dead. . . ."

  "No shit!"

  "I don't understand this, Lydia."

  "Me neither."

  They did not release their grip on each other's arms as they went slowly from the foyer into their father's study and stared down at his dead body. Dorcas moaned and began to weep at the sight of the corpse of her sole remaining parent. Lydia's emotions were more ambiguous, for what he had done to her was unspeakable; and yet he was her father, and he was lying dead at her feet, killed by . . .

  Killed by . . .

  "What the hell is going on?" Lydia repeated frantically.

  Dorcas wiped the tears from her eyes and frowned. "It's as if . . . as if . . ." She paused and then gasped with sudden understanding. "We both saw it. It was real." She spun Lydia around and stared hard into her eyes. "I did see Vernon, I wasn't hallucinating, and neither were you. I did see him, and he did kill Mr. Schilder, and he did take Mr. Patanjali to that cave. . . ." Though her hands were trembling, her voice was hard and even as she saw the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. "Lydia, listen to me. That day, the day Sarah was killed, I was with Mr. Patanjali. He was trying to explain his religion to me, and he was looking right at Vernon when he told me that Shiva, the god of death, has avatars." She waited for her sister to respond, and when she did not, Dorcas shook her and yelled, Don't you get it? Shiva has avatars! That's what he must have been trying to tell me in the cave when . . . " Her eyes went wide. "I never did what he told me to do! That's it, that must be it!"

 
"Dork, what the hell are you talking about?" Lydia whined. "What the hell is an avatar?"

  "Call the police," Dorcas yelled over her shoulder as she ran up the stairs to her bedroom to begin searching for the napkin upon which she had written the prayer.

  "Call the police! Are you nuts?" Lydia shouted after her. "Call them and tell them what? Dorcas? Dorcas!" Her sister did not reply. From upstairs a moment later came the sound of a drawer being pulled free from a bureau and dumped hard onto the floor.

  Rebecca Saunders rolled over and gazed at Sean Brenner through bleary eyes, and then jabbed him in the side. "Hey," she muttered.

  "Hmmm?"

  "You're snoring. Cut it out."

  "Hmmm?" He opened his eyes slightly. "What?"

  "Stop snoring," she said. "You woke me up."

  "Sorry, Becky." He yawned. "What time is it?"

  "Who cares?" she asked, and rolled back over to bury her head in the pillow.

  Sean got out of bed, yawning and scratching, and walked out to the kitchen to look at the clock. Seven o'clock. Only been asleep for a couple of hours. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and then went to the refrigerator to see if he could find some juice. I hate it when I wake up with cotton mouth, he thought.

  He found some tomato juice and drank it down straight from the can. "That's better," he muttered aloud, and then looked out the window at the car that was pulling up to the base of the hill at the bottom of the driveway. "I wonder who . . . ?" he said, and then he saw Alex Brown step slowly and painfully from the car, a shotgun cradled in the crook of his left arm. "Oh, shit," he whispered, and then ran to the other bedroom, where Clayton Saunders was sleeping the untroubled sleep of the innocent. Sean shook him roughly. "Clay, wake up! Wake up!"

  "Wha-what? Huh?" Clayton mumbled.

  "Wake up, man! That crazy old fuck Alex is here, and he's got a gun."

  Clayton sat up in bed and shook his head to clear it. "What did you say?"

  "Alex, man, Alex. He's here with a gun."

  Clayton grimaced. "Great idea, beating the shit out of him, Sean. Real good way to avoid any more trouble."

  "Okay, okay, so I was still fucked up on the drug and I shouldn't have been drinking, okay? Come on, man, we gotta do something!"

  "What do you mean 'we'?" he asked. "You're the one with the problem, not me. Alex ain't gonna kill a paying customer for his broken-down old bar."

  Sean stared at him, astounded at his callousness. "I don't believe this!"

  "All right, all right, don't get so upset," Clayton said, climbing out of bed and pulling on his dungarees and boots. "I'll go talk to him. Jesus. Gotta solve everybody else's problems for them. . . ."

  He donned a sweater and then opened the front door of the trailer. "'Morning, Al. How's every—" and then he jumped back inside as Alex leveled the weapon at him. His motion was well timed, for the shotgun blast ripped a hole through the door right where he had been standing. "Holy shit!" Clayton exclaimed.

  Rebecca ran out from the bedroom, clutching a sheet to her body. "What the hell was that?"

  Before Clayton could answer her, the door he had neglected to lock opened and Alex rushed into the room. His face, swollen and bruised and cut from the beating he had received from Sean, was suffused with an irrational, vengeful fury, and he screamed incoherently when he saw Sean standing in front of Rebecca. He swung the gun in Sean's direction, but Clayton grabbed the large brass hookah from the floor and slammed it down on the barrel just as Sean jumped out of the way and Alex pulled the trigger. The blast struck Rebecca in the knees and the lower portion of her body flew backward, sending her crashing face first onto the floor. The blow to her head sent her reeling into unconsciousness, and then the agony in her shattered legs roused her from it.

  She lay writhing and moaning in a rapidly expanding pool of her own blood as her boyfriend dropped down beside her on his knees and her brother, knowing that both barrels had been emptied, fell upon Alex in a murderous rage.

  "Becky," Sean moaned, "oh no, Becky . . . "She lapsed into unconsciousness and Sean erroneously assumed that she was dead; and in that instant he saw all his dreams of ease and perpetual self-indulgence die also. He fell to his knees and wept, mourning not for the shattered girl beside him, but for his shattered fantasies.

  Clayton threw Alex physically through the trailer door and began to beat the older man with the butt of his own shotgun. Alex tried to fend off the blows with his arms, but Clayton's fury was mightier than Alex's fear, and he fell to the ground on his stomach beneath the barrage of blows. Clayton dropped the gun and jumped on him, rolled him over, and began to pound his face mercilessly with his fists. Alex tried again to defend himself, even tried to fight back, to dislodge Clayton, but he was unable to.

  Clayton looked up to see Sean stumbling out from the trailer, tears cascading from his eyes. "Is Becky okay?"

  "She's dead!" Sean wept.

  Clayton blinked, and then looked down at Alex. He stared hard into the older man's bloody, swollen face, and then he stood up slowly. Alex just lay there, immobilized by pain, watching as Clayton picked up the shotgun and raised the heavy butt above him, preparing to bring it down on Alex's head. "You goddamn fucking bastard," he muttered.

  But the thick stock did not descend. Clayton saw a motion out of the corner of his eye, and then he turned to look down the long driveway at the two indistinct figures that were moving stiffly, slowly toward them, the second one trailing the first by a few hundred yards. He dropped the gun as the closer figure came into the range of clear sight, and then he screamed, and Sean screamed, and as he struggled to his feet in slow agony Alex screamed as well.

  The thing that was shuffling up the drive could not have been described as a skeleton, for the bones had largely decayed into dust years before; but the bits of dust and bone had been drawn together into a semblance of their previous shape, and it was as if a skeleton molded of dirt was approaching them slowly. Sean and Clayton drew back against the side of the trailer as the thing shuffled up to Alex, stopped, seemed to gaze at him from its empty, dusty eye sockets, and then held out its arms to him as if inviting him into its embrace.

  "No!" Alex cried. "No! Go away! Get away from me!" The thing bore neither facial nor physical resemblance to any living human being, even the hair having fallen out over the long years since burial; but Alex Brown recognized Paula's wedding dress, the dress she had worn when they lowered her into her grave. He recognized the tarnished cameo brooch that dangled from the narrow neck bones, and he recognized the wedding ring he had placed upon her finger three decades before, the wedding ring that was still encircling the gray bone. "No!" he cried again. "No!"

  And then the thing cocked its head just so, and in that simple gesture, a gesture he had seen so often in his wife's lifetime, that gesture of love and sympathy and understanding and concern, in that simple gesture Alex saw the years roll back and all the warmth and happiness of those distant days return to him. "Pau . . . Pau. . . ." he said, his voice choking. The thing took a step forward and he fell into its arms, weeping like a child as it stroked the back of his head and pressed his tearful face onto its bony shoulder, and then slowly began to rock him back and forth in its embrace. "Paula," he wept, "Paula, Paula."

  The thing did not release him from its gentle grip as it turned and began to walk back down the drive toward the road. Alex stumbled along beside it, weeping, mumbling incoherently, his body racked by pain and his broken mind racked by sorrow. Sean and Clayton watched silently, their eyes wide with wonder, and then both screamed again as the second figure drew closer and quickened its pace and stretched its arms out toward Clayton.

  Sarah Ostlich had been buried less than three months before and the chill of the season had inhibited the process of decay; but her flesh was greenish-black and cracked and broken, and her dead eyes stared ahead of her, unblinking and wild, and when she smiled at Clayton, her lips split open all along their length, and maggots crawled out of her mouth.

 
Clayton began to run. Sarah Ostlich began to chase him.

  Sean watched them disappear into the forest, and then he heard Rebecca's voice from within the trailer, moaning, "Sean, Clay . . . help me. . . ." He paused for less than an instant as he weighed money against survival and sanity. He found the choice an easy one to make. "Sorry, sweetheart," he muttered, and then ran to the jeep.

  Clayton sped through the woods, stumbling and falling every few feet, screaming madly as the corpse pursued him. He hopped over fallen trees and slipped on the snow, he leaped across frozen streams and slammed his head against low-hanging branches. He ran and ran and ran, and still the corpse followed, and when he caught his foot on an upthrust root and his weight propelled him forward, he heard his ankle snap like a thick twig, and he lay helpless in the snow.

  Sarah jumped on top of him, and no effort he made served to move her. She seemed to be attempting to laugh as she ripped open her dirty burial gown, grabbed his hands, and pressed them against the rot of her water-sack breasts.

  "No!" he shrieked. "Nooooooooo!"

  His mouth was open long enough for her to lean forward and thrust her desiccated, worm-infested tongue into his mouth. Clayton gagged and began to vomit, but she did not seem to care. As she held him motionless with her right hand, her left hand reached down and tore open his dungarees. She grabbed hold of his penis and testicles with her thin, cold, hard, sharp fingers.

  "Lov . . . er," she croaked, and then ripped his genitals from his body.

  By the time Sarah Ostlich was forcing the bloody chunks of flesh down Clayton's throat, Sean Brenner was already speeding through the town of Beckskill in the jeep. Got to get help, cops, somebody, anybody, this is nuts, this is nuts. . . .

  Everywhere he looked he saw the walking dead, corpses ringing doorbells, skeletons tapping door knock-ers as casual as you please, coming to say hi hi hi hello to friends and neighbors and relatives whom they had not seen in a pig's age, and family reunions were abounding. Michael Imhof's dead parents dropped in for Sunday dinner, and Frank Bruno's grandmother just hugged her grandson to death.