The Goblins of Bellwater

by Molly Ringle

  “It’s times like that I see why people used to believe in nature spirits. It totally looks like magic. So I don’t know about mermaids, but some kind of sparkly water faeries—maybe I could believe in those. Almost.”

  She still grinned, but Kit’s heartbeat began doing funny things, the way it did when he was about to try something especially stupid. “Huh.” He slid off her, leaving one arm draped across her. “What about the forest? You spend a lot of time there. Any…run-ins with the fae, like you and Skye used to make up stories about?”

  “The fae?” Livy lifted her eyebrows, teasing but impressed. “Scholarly word there.”

  “It’s what people call them sometimes.” He wasn’t even smiling now. He just watched her, and waited for her answer.

  She smoothed her hair back and folded an arm behind her head, gazing at the log beams of his ceiling. “Well…I could almost believe it some days. Once in a while.”

  His heart beat against his ribs. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Skye’s said this too. Like, there’s been a couple of times we swear we saw a path that wasn’t there before. Then we couldn’t find it again later. Just goes to show how easy it is to get turned around in the woods.”

  “Was this at dusk? At night?”

  “Hmm. I guess right as it was getting dark, yeah. Things get harder to see then, is probably why.”

  “Listen. You ever see a path like that, don’t follow it.”

  Her eyes turned to him, bemused. “What?”

  He lifted up onto his elbow. “I’m serious. Promise me you won’t follow paths like that.”

  “Why not?” Doubt sharpened her voice.

  “There’s…” He dropped his gaze to his hand, which he ran along her warm skin, between breasts and navel. “My family, we’ve all seen things, things people wouldn’t believe, things I wouldn’t have believed until I saw them myself. First and foremost, between dusk and dawn, do not follow paths that weren’t there before.”

  She hitched up onto her elbow too, dislodging his hand. “You’re kind of freaking me out. What is it you think would happen?”

  He was almost shaking. He couldn’t just go telling people, especially someone he liked as much as her. But now he’d said this much, and he needed to finish, or he’d sound like a serial killer. Or at least someone aiding and abetting a serial killer.

  “Well…you know how there’ve been people found dead in the woods, like that fisherman a while back?”

  “He died of exposure, if I recall. It was cold. I mean, yeah, people get lost and die in the woods once in a while, all over the world. It’s not usually foul play.”

  “I’m not talking foul play, exactly. Not by other humans.” Kit already wished he hadn’t started down this road, but now he was stuck on it. “It’s more like…enchantment.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She waited.

  “Fae,” he said, his voice weak. “Goblins, technically. A type of fae. They…followed my family here, generations ago. It was…”

  “Wait. What?” Her voice had gone flat, her demeanor buttoning itself all the way back up to hard-line scientist, even while she lay there naked. “Goblins?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re messing with me. Right?”

  He shook his head. “I wish.”

  She studied him a few more seconds. “You really believe this.”

  “It’s a long story and I know it sounds crazy. But I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  “In order to hear them yourself…it’s dangerous and I don’t recommend it, but you could summon them in the forest. They might answer. They’d open a path to you, then if you don’t take the path you’re all right; that’s the important thing. But you’d at least see the path, and hear them, so you’d know it’s true…”

  Livy scooted off the bed and grabbed up her underwear, bra, jeans. She started putting them back on. “Okay, that? Freaks me out even more. You realize you sound like a murderer? You do know that?” Her voice quivered.

  His heart dropped as he realized how badly he’d frightened her, how horrible he’d made himself look. “I’m not. I swear. Wait—Livy, come on. Listen to me, please. I’ve never hurt anyone. What I’m trying to do is to keep them from hurting anyone.”

  She rushed into her socks, her sweatshirt. “In that case I’m thinking we have very different belief systems. I should…go back and check on Skye…I just have a lot to deal with.” She wouldn’t look at him.

  “God, don’t—all right, wait, there’s another way.” He scrambled out of bed and pulled his boxers back on. “I have the letter from my great-grandmother that explains it all. It’s here in the house. I’ll get it and show you.”

  “No, I really ought to go. Maybe we can talk about it later.” Dressed in all but her boots, which she’d left by the front door, she padded quickly to the spiral staircase and descended.

  Kit chased after her. “Livy, I am not insane. You know I’m not. Give me a chance. Stay and listen.”

  At the door, she held up her hand to silence him. Her eyes closed a moment, then opened to regard him with something between compassion and hurt. “I really don’t have time. Right now. For this.” She said the last two words softly, but they fell upon him like hammers.

  As she stuffed her feet into her boots, he stood watching, shirtless, barefoot, trembling. “You think I’m crazy. I don’t blame you. But I am begging you…”

  Livy slid into her coat and rounded on him. “Goblins? You’re begging me to listen to how there are goblins in the forest? I’m a scientist, Kit. What do you think I’m going to say?”

  “I think you should look for proof. Not run off.”

  She zipped up her coat, lips set tight. “Yeah, well, maybe there’s more wrong here than just the goblin story. I’ll see you later.” She slipped out and trudged down the beach to her kayak.

  Kit stood with the door open, letting the cold wind slice against his skin, watching her shrink in his line of sight without a single glance back at him.

  He slammed the door shut, kicked it with his bare toes, then closed his eyes and leaned his forehead on it. If the curse was going to kill him young the way it had for his ancestors, he fervently wished it would get on with it.

  Livy slashed at the water with her paddle. The cold air stabbed her lungs, and her shoulders burned with exertion, but she kept at it. She paddled farther than necessary, past the tip of the island and out into the middle of the inlet. The afternoon wind picked up, rocking her kayak and frothing the little waves into whitecaps. Belatedly, she recognized the danger of being out here alone in hypothermia-inducing waters.

  Though probably it was no more dangerous than having sex with a delusional freak.

  She bowed her head and let her paddle rest across the top of the kayak. Damn it. He had seemed so fabulous. Of course he’d have to turn out to be deranged.

  She plunged the paddle blade into the water to swing back toward shore.

  A gray wave slapped back. Stiffened with cold, her hands fumbled. The paddle escaped her grip and knifed into the water. She grabbed at it, but it washed out of reach, floating away from her with the next wave.

  She looked around in despair for something else to use as a paddle— her water bottle? Driftwood? Where the hell were the stray flip-flops sailing through the water when you actually needed them? All the while she kept an eye on her paddle, which hadn’t gotten too far away yet. But if it did, maybe someone on shore was watching, and would figure out she needed help, or at least she could phone someone to bring out another boat and tow her in before it got dark…

  A madrone log bobbed up alongside her kayak, five feet long with an end full of twigs. She seized it. Drenched in chilly salt water, it numbed her hands at once, but she plunged it in and managed to use it to turn the kayak toward her drifting paddle. She stretched the branch toward it, aiming to catch the blade in the twigs. Her first three swipes fell short by several inches.

  Tears stung her eyes. “Come on,
” she wailed. “Please.”

  Something poked up from the water and batted her paddle back toward her. Something like…a hand. Except green, and webbed. It dunked back under before she got a good look. Her paddle, meanwhile, skated a foot closer. Livy smacked the branch down on top of it, raked it in, and pulled it back aboard.

  “Oh my God,” she mumbled in relief.

  She tossed the branch back in the water, then sat motionless, watching the choppy surface where the hand-thing had disappeared. What had she just seen?

  Seal flipper, maybe. Fish happening to jump at a lucky moment. Sodden log or trash getting pushed to the surface for a second.

  Definitely not a mermaid or a water-goblin or anything of that sort. God damn Kit Sylvain. He was making her see things now.

  The sun was setting by the time she hauled the kayak onto the public dock in Bellwater. Her arms shook with exhaustion and her hands stung with cold.

  She sat in her car a while after loading up the boat, staring alternately at her phone and out the window. Kit hadn’t tried to contact her in the hour since she’d left. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or hurt.

  When the streetlights came on at the dock, she switched on the car and drove home.

  Skye had just returned from her shift when Livy walked in. The smell of espresso wafted off her even from five feet away. She was hunched over the kitchen counter, texting someone. Not Livy, it would seem. Probably Grady. Skye and Grady seemed thick as thieves lately. Ugh, Sylvain men. Fucking womanizers.

  Livy threw her keys onto the counter and kicked out of her boots. Skye gave her a double-take, concern entering her otherwise impassive face.

  Livy shook her head, and shuffled forward to get a glass of water. “I know how to pick ’em, Skye.”

  Skye lifted her eyebrows.

  Livy swallowed half the glass of water. “Yeah. Kit. He’s…ugh. How do I not see they’re crazy until after I’ve slept with them? How do they hide it so well?”

  Skye stood up straight, elbows leaving the counter. “Crazy?”

  “I know. Judgment-laden word, not cool. Sorry. Either he honestly believes some weird shit, or he’s trying to mess with me in this lame and bizarre way. Or he’s actually dangerous. I mean, maybe I should be thankful I’m here and not wrapped in duct tape in his crawlspace, right?”

  “Duct tape,” Skye said, skeptically.

  Livy finished the glass of water, set it down, and pushed her tangled hair out of her face. “Oh, I know, I should listen to him. Just—God, I’m embarrassed even to tell you what he said. It’s so…I’m sorry, the only word is ‘crazy.’”

  “What he said?”

  Livy shuffled to a chair and flopped into it. “I would never tell this to anyone but you, Skye. He says, get this, that I should be careful in the woods, because goblins live there.” Livy covered her face in mortification. “He seemed genuinely concerned. What the hell?”

  Skye’s hissing intake of breath made Livy drop her hands and frown at her.

  Skye had gone white. She stared wide-eyed at Livy, lips parted but without saying a word.

  Alarm flashed through Livy. “What? What’s wrong?”

  Skye turned and ran out of the kitchen. Her footsteps thumped down the hall to her room, then thumped back, and she smacked her sketchbook down in front of Livy on the table, open to a page where she’d drawn a creepy gremlin creature.

  Livy frowned at it. “Okay? You showed me this before. What? You’re saying…this is a goblin?”

  Skye just stared into her eyes, breathing hard. She seemed unable even to nod or shake her head. That always did happen when Livy tried to ask important questions about what had happened to her, though…

  Livy examined the picture again, then looked back at her sister. “This is something you believe too? You seem as concerned as he did. Look, I don’t—”

  Skye grabbed Livy’s wrist and pulled her out of the chair. Next thing Livy knew, Skye was shoving her boots at her, grabbing car keys and the sketchbook, and hauling Livy to the front door.

  “Skye! What? What are we doing?”

  Skye stalked down the front path, beckoning impatiently to Livy. Stumbling into her chilly, damp boots, Livy hurried after her.

  “Where are we going?” She followed Skye to her silver Volkswagen.

  “Kit,” Skye bit out, in the numb-tongued way she did when she had to come up with a word instead of echoing it. She swung into the Scirocco’s driver’s seat and started the car.

  Livy jumped in, but only to keep Skye from harm, not because she approved of this errand. “Skye, whoa. I really don’t want to see him.”

  Skye tightened her lips and backed the car out of the driveway.

  Though Livy kept up a stream of “Skye,” and “Come on,” and “No,” Skye drove them straight through town and across the bridge onto Crabapple Island.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  KIT OPENED HIS SECOND BEER. GIVEN WHAT ALCOHOL HAD DONE TO HIS PARENTS, HE RARELY DRANK HIMSELF, BUT HE figured tonight got to be an exception. He had gotten dressed again, but otherwise had been doing virtually nothing but pacing around the inside of the cabin like it was a jail cell. He circled the kitchen island, glowering at the frail old letter encased in a plastic sheet protector that he had dug out from the file box.

  Not long after dark, Grady came back from the garage. “Hey. Nice afternoon?” When Kit just exhaled through his nose and kept pacing, Grady slowed in his approach. His eyes took in the empty beer bottle on the counter and the newly opened one in Kit’s hand. “Oh. Um… dinner, then?”

  Kit looked away. “Whatever.”

  “Well. Then I’ll…”

  Then Kit had to stop prowling the kitchen. Right. Kit grabbed the letter, and took it and his beer to the front door. After throwing on his leather jacket and boots, he stalked out into the dark.

  His front deck was just a rectangle of boards a cinder-block’s height off the pebbles at the top of the beach. He crossed it in two strides, descended the one stair, and crunched out onto the shore. The dark silhouette of a heron glided through the dusk, reflected in the faint purple surface of the water. Kit glared at the peaceful scene. He rolled up the letter in its plastic casing, stuffed it into the inside pocket of his jacket, then recommenced pacing and drinking.

  A few minutes later, headlights splashed across the sculptures at the side of his house, and he caught a glimpse of Skye’s car with two people in it. This could be a decidedly ugly visit. He walked back up the slope, bracing himself.

  The car shut off, and soon not only Livy but Skye came rushing around the side of the house, Skye in the lead, her hair all loose and wild.

  Kit met them in front of the deck. “Hey.” He glanced behind her at Livy.

  Livy flung up her hand, harassed and apologetic. “She insisted on coming here. I don’t know.”

  Skye shoved a notebook at Kit, opened on its spiral binding to a page in the middle. He took it in his free hand and tilted it toward the light from the house.

  Then he had to set down the beer bottle on the deck and use that hand to grip the boards to steady himself. He took in the drawing of Redring for a few seconds, then looked at Skye. “You saw this?”

  She breathed unsteadily. She didn’t answer, just stared at him with a plea in her eyes. Then she turned the page to show him the sketch of the goblin dwellings, exactly as he’d seen them by looking up from below. But she’d drawn them from a closer perspective than he’d ever gotten.

  “Oh, God,” Kit said. “This is what happened to you.”

  Skye’s eyes filled with tears. She rolled her lips inward, as if biting down on sobs.

  “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. I thought of it, but then…I hoped…”

  “Is someone going to tell me what the fuck this is about?” Livy shouldered her way in next to Skye, glaring daggers at Kit. “What did you do to her?”

  Skye placated her sister with a hand on her arm, and shook her head. She thumbed away the tears on her cheeks.
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  The front door opened, spilling more light out. Grady paused there, then came forward. “Skye. What—?”

  Skye flew up the stair and buried herself in Grady’s arms, crying.

  Grady’s eyebrows furrowed. He looked at Kit, and his voice went harsh. “What did you do?”

  Kit exhaled a sigh. “It isn’t what I did. It’s what our great-grandma did.” He looked at Livy again, whose eyes still sparked with anger. “Come in,” he said. “I’ll explain.”

  Skye thought she might pass out. Someone knew. Kit knew, and he was going to explain. Please, please let there be a way out of this. She clung to Grady as they trooped into the cabin.

  Her sister still looked ready to pulverize Kit. Arms folded, Livy planted herself with her back to the cold fireplace, and refused to sit down. “Okay, Sylvain. Explain.”

  Kit pulled some papers wrapped in clear plastic from his jacket, and unrolled them. “It’s a goblin curse. They must have caught her at night, and lured her down one of their paths. She can’t talk about it because that’s how the spell works. Right?” He glanced at Skye.

  She couldn’t nod, so she straightened her posture, keeping her eyes on him.

  “Yeah.” Kit smacked the papers against his palm. “Can’t even nod or shake your head when anyone asks about it. Sounds like the kind of thing they do.”

  Grady sank to sit on his folded-out sofa-bed, drawing Skye with him. Skye leaned her head on his shoulder.

  Livy gave them a second glance, as if finally registering that they were acting like a couple. Then she narrowed her eyes at Kit again. “I’m going to need a lot more explanation than that.”

  Kit pulled the papers out of their plastic sleeve. “Where to start. How about the beginning.”

  “Good idea.” Livy sounded as icy as a January night.

  “Well then, here.” Kit held out the sheaf of papers, but she kept her arms folded. “Testimony of my great-grandmother, Élodie Roux.” He nodded to Grady. “Our great-grandmother.”

  Grady nodded, still silent, frowning in confusion.

  Livy didn’t move to take it. When she glanced at Skye again, Skye whispered, “Please.”