Goblins

by David Bernstein

  Dean heard the 911 operator’s voice asking him again what the emergency was.

  The shimmer only lasted a couple of seconds, but it left him speechless. His mouth hung open and he was trembling. Normally, he’d chalk up an episode like this to shock or anxiety, but seeing the look on his wife’s face told him that what he’d seen hadn’t been in his head.

  “Mommy,” Jacob said. “Daddy.” He held his arms out. “No scared.” He stepped forward.

  Sonya stepped back. Dean remained frozen. Finally, he asked her if she’d seen that, seen him change. He knew she had, but he had to make sure.

  “Yes, I saw that. I think.”

  “Hello, sir,” the 911 operator said. “Is this an emergency?”

  The woman’s voice got through to him, reminded him that his son needed the paramedics—hell, maybe they all did. He gave his name and address, then said, “I’m the father of the missing boy, the little leaguer who disappeared. He’s here. At the house. Please, we need an ambulance and the police.”

  The air around Jacob shimmered again, and as it did so, he sprang forward and landed on Sonya’s chest. She stumbled back with a scream and crashed into the wall. Jacob was gone, replaced by the creature Dean had seen through the shimmering haze. The thing’s clawed feet were embedded into Sonya’s chest. It climbed up to her face, blood decorating the front of her shirt. She continued to scream and swatted at the thing in the sides, arms and head. It didn’t seem to notice or care and wrapped its legs around her throat. It then sunk one of its clawed hands into the side of her head. Sonya stopped screaming. Her eyes looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets. A nauseating ripping and suctioning sound filled the air as the creature ripped open her skull. A fraction of a second later, a single chunk of flesh, bone and scalp flapped along the side of her head as if it was on a hinge, leaving her brain exposed. The olive-green monster glistened in crimson. Letting loose a chuckle, it opened its wide maw and sank its face into Sonya’s skull, like a starving canine does when its bowl is filled with food. The creature’s head came up a moment later, its cheeks bulging with gray matter.

  Dean’s bladder released itself. He wasn’t breathing and felt like he’d been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer. He told himself he was dreaming. He didn’t need to do anything. He’d wake soon.

  Sonya’s corpse collapsed to the floor. The creature adjusted itself during the fall and was now on the upper part of her chest. It lifted her head up by the hair, and with its other hand, scooped out the rest of her brain.

  Dean sucked in a breath. The sharp scent of copper wafted over him, mixing with the pungent scent of urine and feces. The horrid odor from before was there too. All the smells mixing together were overwhelming, and he didn’t remember being able to detect smells in a dream.

  Dean closed his eyes and prayed to wake up. There was no point in looking at the creature or his wife’s dead body. It wasn’t real and there was no point in watching the carnage. His alcohol-depraved mind had imagined this nightmare. It wanted to fuck with him. Show him what withholding liquor would do to him.

  Scraping noises filled his ears. Nail on bone. He knew it was the creature’s claws raking against the inside of his wife’s skull, cleaning it out and wanting every last morsel, like a kid running a spoon around the inside of a emptied cake batter bowl.

  Damn, why wasn’t he waking up? Shutting his eyes was doing little to stop the awful images. His brain was conjuring them up just fine to go along with each dreadful sound.

  He was scared, though he knew he shouldn’t be. What was happening was only a nightmare. To further bolster his belief, he thought of his son and how the boy had simply turned up out of the blue. Such a thing didn’t happen in real life. Let alone him turning into a monster.

  When he woke, he’d be upset. He’d been given his son back only to learn it was bullshit, and on top of that, his boy had turned into a monster and killed his mother. Maybe he had drunk the alcohol and was passed out in the basement.

  Fuck, he was pissed now—sobriety down the drain and a horrible dream to boot.

  The room was suddenly quiet. Maybe his anger had flushed the little green goblin away.

  Goblin?

  Maybe he was taking control of his dream, not letting his imagination get the best of him.

  Dean opened his eyes and nearly jumped. The creature was standing a foot away from him, covered in gore—pieces of flesh and sheets of blood. He looked into its eyes and saw a reflection of himself and the surrounding room, the peepers like giant balls of black marble.

  “You little shit,” he said, regaining his anger. He prodded the creature in the chest. “You’re in my head. My dream. I’m the master of it.”

  The monster’s arm moved with blurring speed as if to knock Dean’s hand away, but Dean’s arm remained where it was in front of the thing. He felt a burning sensation on his wrist, similar to the time he grabbed the wrong end of his wife’s curling iron. He looked down and watched as his hand fell to the floor. Blood spewed from the stump. The severed body part hit the floor with a dull thud.

  Dean’s eyes bulged. His jaw hung open. The creature let loose a hissing chuckle and grinned, pointy teeth revealed. The pain in his wrist grew more intense. He wasn’t supposed to feel pain in a dream. The perception of reality thundered across his state of disbelief, shattering it completely. He looked up at the creature and shook his head. “You’re not real. You can’t be—”

  The creature lashed out with its clawed hand, silencing Dean. His throat went numb and he could no longer talk or swallow. Warm liquid flowed down his neck and over his chest. The numbness faded and sharp hot pain replaced it. He felt for his throat, knowing a large chunk was missing. He staggered back, gasping for breath and coughing up blood.

  The last thing Dean saw before the creature sprang on him and bit off his face was it lapping up his voice box and throat flesh with its worm-like tongue.

  Chapter Five

  Chief Hale sat behind his desk and brought his steaming cup of vanilla roast coffee to his lips, when Officer James Willows entered his office with a grim look on his face. Willows was a good-looking, tall, black man with soft brown eyes that could burn with intensity when things got serious. At forty years of age, he could easily pass for twenty-five.

  Willows had been a member of the Manteo police force for five years. Before that, he had been a patrolman for the city of Raleigh. He served ten years there until his wife—who wasn’t supposed to be able to have kids—became pregnant. During her fourth month, she was stabbed on her way home from her job at the hospital by a deranged homeless man. She lost the baby, but a year later, was with child again.

  Wanting out of the city, Willows applied for jobs around the state and got one with the Manteo police. Though their tragedies were different, Hale and Willows both moved to the island for the same reason—to leave the city life behind. Hale liked Willows a lot. He was good police and an even better person.

  Hale put his coffee down without taking a sip. His stomach was suddenly in knots. Willows slowly shook his head. Whatever was about to come out of the man’s mouth wasn’t going to be good and most likely involved the missing boy.

  “Sir, it’s the Brown residence,” Willows said. “It’s awful.”

  “They found the boy?”

  “No. There’s been a double murder.”

  Twenty minutes later, Hale was standing next to Willows in the Brown residence and staring at the grisly crime scene. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought a bomb had gone off in a room full of people. There was so much carnage. The sharp scent of copper and the pungent smell of human waste were overwhelming. They hung in the air like a thick fog. Whenever he swallowed, he swore he could taste them.

  The Crime Scene Unit was en route from the mainland. Only Darrell Mitzer, the first officer on the scene, had entered the room to look for survivors. He
was smart enough to have left his shoes outside the bedroom door—the soles caked with blood and pieces of Mr. and Mrs. Brown—before he flew downstairs and made it to the front steps where he puked.

  There wasn’t much left of the couple. From the doorway, Hale saw two large pools of blood, guessing each one was where the bodies bled out. But then it appeared as if an animal had been let loose. Blood had splattered everything—the bed, walls, ceiling and furniture. Body parts and unidentifiable chunks of flesh were scattered about the room. A foot, arm and ear lay on the bed, while another foot, a few fingers, some bones stripped clean, an eyeball and a breast were on the floor amongst other gobs of flesh. Most of a torso—a male’s by the looks of it—was propped against a dresser. The lower abdominal area had been sliced open. Intestines trailed onto the floor. There were strange and numerous tracks around the room. They appeared to be the combination of human and animal. Claw marks appeared in the wood in places. Spiked onto the bed’s headboard posts were Mr. and Mrs. Brown’s heads, the scene like something out of medieval times. Their jaws hung open as if in mid-scream. Their eyes were missing. For a moment, just a moment, Hale wondered whose eyeball it was he’d seen on the floor. Spinal columns extended from the heads and draped down the bedposts like tails.

  Hale had seen enough. He felt sick to his stomach and was about to turn away when he spotted a green substance on the floor. Now that he saw it, he noticed it was all over, mixed in with the body parts and blood. Some of it was near the entrance. He squatted to get a better look and thought it was the same stuff that had been found in the woods where Jacob had gone missing.

  “Chief,” someone said from behind.

  Hale shot to his feet, hand on the butt of his service weapon. His heart felt as if it was in his throat. It was Willows. Hale had been so absorbed in the scene, he’d forgotten the man was standing behind him. He let out a breath and his shoulders fell.

  “Sorry, Chief,” Willows said. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, just on edge with this shit.”

  “‘On edge’ is one way to put it,” Willows said, shaking his head as he looked into the room. “I mean, what the hell happened here?”

  Though Willows’ outward demeanor appeared stoic, his face like stone, Hale saw fear in the man’s eyes. Hale was shaken himself, but as the chief, he needed to be the one his officers looked up to.

  Hale put a hand on the man’s shoulder and drew Willows’ gaze from the scene. He motioned with his head to walk, and the two men headed away from the bloodbath and farther down the hallway. “We don’t need to see that anymore. We’ll guard the house and wait for CSU, okay?”

  “I’m a little…hell, Chief, I’m fucked up,” Willows admitted. “But I know my job. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I know. We’re veterans. But you’re right, this shit is something out of a nightmare.”

  Silence took up the air between the two men for a few moments. Hale didn’t want to speculate aloud. It was best to let CSU do their thing, but he couldn’t help to ponder the situation. It appeared Jacob’s kidnappers had returned and killed his parents.

  “I get people killing people,” Willows said. “I mean, it ain’t right, but it happens. But to do so like that is just evil. Like the psychos enjoyed it.”

  Hale nodded. “We’ve definitely got some crazies on our hands, if it is more than one killer.”

  “I just don’t get it,” Willows said. “That’s just wrong in every way.”

  Hale saw the first strings on the man’s psyche beginning to come apart. He caught his officer’s gaze and said, “We have to let CSU go over the scene and give us preliminaries before we try figuring out why someone would do such a thing. In the meantime, we have a job to do. I need you thinking clearly, not going off somewhere. This is awful, but the others and I need you. They’ll need your leadership. Why don’t you go downstairs and make sure they’re all right? Keep anyone else from coming up until CSU arrives.”

  Willows took a deep breath and nodded, then headed downstairs.

  Left alone, Hale returned to the bedroom and felt the hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck stand. He didn’t know why he hadn’t realized it earlier, but there wasn’t a single drop of blood anywhere but in the bedroom. He glanced around the floor, then down the stairs. Nothing. He checked the bedroom’s doorframe and didn’t find a single globule of blood. Everything ended at the threshold. Then his gaze went to the open window and it looked like he had his answer.

  The scent of death was overwhelming and making his eyes tear, but he remained in the doorway and scanned the room. As difficult as it was, he looked for signs of the Brown boy. For smaller body parts or clothing. Not signs, he thought. Remains. There was only the heads of the parents on display, which was a good sign the kid was still alive. But he had no idea if the kid’s body or head was somewhere else. Maybe in a drawer, the closet or the bedroom bathroom. He’d let CSU find it if it was there.

  The thought of discovering the dismembered kid made him weak in the knees. Instead, he focused on the reason for the brutality. In all his years on the Chicago police force, he’d never seen or heard of a crime scene like the one he was looking at. He knew drug cartels often performed gruesome executions, but they were usually artistic or organized. The present scene was messy, animalistic. The killers were definitely sending a message, but what kind? Maybe they were simply sick and enjoyed bloodshed. Bathed in the mess, even had sex among the carnage. Screw it, if it led to the killers’ DNA and their apprehension, he was all for it.

  He asked himself why the kidnappers had come back. What could be the reason? Jacob’s parents would never stop looking for him. Never give up. Eventually the cops would. The case would grow cold until it was forgotten, the tale an unsolved mystery. Other crimes would take precedence. But the parents would never move on. With them out of the way, the kidnappers wouldn’t have to worry as much. And as time wore on, the worry would lessen further.

  He wondered about the killers, thinking they’d purposely overdone the crime to throw the authorities off their trail. Maybe the acts made them sick, but they did what they had to do. Maybe they’d let an animal loose to throw off the investigators. Hale pictured starved or trained dogs let loose after the Browns were killed. The animals would eat and fight and play with the remains.

  Hale shook his head, disgusted. His imagination was getting the best of him. As much as he wanted to believe animals had been involved, he didn’t think it was the case. He didn’t see any canine hairs either. No, what happened in the room was pure evil.

  With the scene starting to get to him, his stomach roiling, Hale turned away and headed downstairs where he waited for CSU.

  Chapter Six

  The goblin returned to the cave from which it had come, the same place it had once entered as a boy. No longer did the creature remember life as a human. The days of going to school, celebrating birthdays, hanging out with friends, playing ball and loving in the way people did were all gone. Erased as if they’d never existed. The small flame that held its humanity had been extinguished when it killed its former parents. This was part of the ritual and what the goblin king demanded.

  Goblin birth was painful as the human in them died. The small, vicious creatures were born from pure evil and hate and with the need to prove themselves to their god, the goblin king. A small amount of human pain remained in the newborn. Killing its former parents was the only way to end it, which was why goblins always did such things with glee in their heart. The only time the monsters found pleasure and joy was in the pain of others.

  The Jacob goblin hurried down the tunnel, an earthen pathway that existed for hundreds of years. It had been carved out when the goblin king was called. The cave traveled deep and the air grew hotter and more humid as the Jacob goblin went. Excitement coursed through its veins. The noxious odors of death and decay grew stronger the closer it came to the portal th
at led to its world. It walked by dens where goblin guards hid, many munching on human remains. The Jacob goblin could hear their razor-sharp bone knives and spears clanking together as he passed by. Any human or animal trying to make their way to the goblin king’s lair would be met with a painful death.

  Finally, the Jacob goblin came to the portal, a slowly spiraling sphere of hellion plasma derived from the essence of human pain and suffering. The creature held out its palm, revealing an eyeball from each of its former parents. The sphere pulsated and spun faster. It became concave in form, resembling a whirlpool. The goblin felt the pull and stepped through.

  It came out the other side and continued along the cave, but now it was in its home world, a section of Hell ruled by the goblin king. The walls of the tunnel were no longer earthen but made of living human flesh that writhed and throbbed. The temperature was much warmer here and the goblin bathed in the heat as it periodically gouged the walls with its claws and felt the pain it caused ripple through its body like static electricity. Though the flesh had no eyes or mouths or ears, it was human and alive and felt pain. The rancid smell of putrefying corpses was ripe in the air. The Jacob goblin grinned and took in a huge breath, wishing it could sink its dagger-like teeth into a human again. Instead, it ran its wormlike tongue along a portion of the wall, tasting the salty goodness. Unable to restrain itself, it wrested out a handful of flesh and consumed the chewy portion before continuing on. It was good, but not nearly as wonderful as eating fresh, living human meat.

  It turned this way and that as multiple passages opened up leading off to different areas of the otherworldly kingdom. Various smells of sex, violence, blood and decay wafted from each branching tunnel. The goblin had to navigate around its brethren, for none budged an inch for the newly made scum. The Jacob goblin had to make his way by getting on his hands and knees and crawling between their legs or moving aside to let them pass. No words were exchanged, merely grunts of dislike. A large notorious goblin named Crud, known to eat newborns, grabbed the Jacob goblin by his throat and threw him into the wall. It cackled and told him that if he wasn’t heading to dinner, he’d eat him one limb at a time while the Jacob goblin watched.