by T L Barrett
The Italian man that stepped out of the darkness in a Brooks Bros. suit was not exactly human. His ears and teeth were a bit too long. Gray fuzzy hair covered the backs of his hands and the nape of his neck.
“Looks like I interrupted a lover’s quarrel.”
“No, this is not my—” Barry began. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my house?”
“I’m here on the authority of the folk tribunal. You are hereby summoned to a court of monstrous justice,” the good fella twitched his nose, flicked his shoulders and went for his pocket.
“Ollie, get out of here! Run, and don’t come back!” Barry yelled. Brown hairs sprouted on Barry’s face and hands.
“Down, boy!” the intruder said and fired a gun at Barry. Ollie got up and ran for the bathroom door. Barry looked down at the feathered tail of the sleeping dart which protruded from his chest. He bared his fangs, and went to go around the table. His feet did not work so well. He tried to catch himself, but his arms had taken the night off, apparently, as well. The Italian ran across the room after Ollie. Barry clutched ineffectively at the Italian leather loafers the man wore. The intruder leaned over slightly and fired the gun into Barry’s face. The dart hit Barry above and between his eyes. Barry’s eyes rolled into his head.
“Stay, puppy chow!” the Italian quipped and ran into the bathroom. The bathroom window stood open. The curtains billowed in a spring night breeze.
The Italian swore. He had lost the vampire.
* * * *
Glen read the X-Men comic again by the light of the Sterno lantern. His eyes kept misting up, but he needed to read the whole thing carefully, just to be sure that it wasn’t a ruse, or a trick or something. It had to be a trick. They wouldn’t kill off his favorite X-man. That was crazy. They already killed off his favorite superhero, this was…this was…
It was true. Nightcrawler was dead. There was no other way around it.
“No!” Glen said, and real tears started to drip onto the cursed issue. “No!” He looked up at the night sky and roared through his tears. He was caught between the desire to smash things and find Mister Cuddles and get some love.
But Mister Cuddles was dead. Nightcrawler was dead. The world kept taking the things that Glen loved and destroying them. He sobbed and wept and beat his knuckles against the Earth. Suddenly, he stopped. His wiped his face with a hairy arm and narrowed his eyes.
“Who’s there?” he asked. A little pale head peaked up over the edge of a rock. It had black eyes that glistened in the firelight. Little horns sprouted from his head.
“What do we have here, a little goblin? Well, don’t be afraid. Why don’t you come out? I won’t hurt you,” Glen motioned with his big fingers. The goblin hesitated and then stepped out into the light.
“Why, you’re just a little fellow, ain’t you? Are you hungry?”
“Are you Glenwood Trucksmasher?” the Goblin asked in a clipped German accent.
“Well, you’re a Kraut. That’s…interesting,” Glen said. “I’m Glen, yeah, who’s asking?”
“Were you ze one who rescued ze humans from ze fire two days ago?” the goblin asked. Glen tried to hide his smile, it was difficult. He had admittedly fantasized about such a thing happening, he just didn’t think it would happen so soon.
“Well, I am, but I can’t take all the credit, little fellow. My good friend, Barry was some help. We’re a team, you see.”
“I see,” the goblin said.
“I suppose you want to hear the whole story. Well, let me just get myself a beer all right? I’ll need to wet my throat. If you want an autograph…well that might cost you, but we can always barter about the specifics.” Glen bent down to where he kept a beer in the cool spot under a rock. Something clicked behind him. Glen froze and turned around.
The goblin was holding some kind of a gun and pointing it at Glen.
“Hey…that doesn’t look like a toy, little guy—” Glen began.
“You are hereby summoned to ze folk tribunal, where you and your friend must face monstrous justice,” the goblin shouted.
Glen swore and threw his beer at the goblin. He turned and shouted, “Barry!” as he leapt over a rock and dashed for his friend’s house. Meanwhile, the goblin neatly dodged the flying beer can and fired a tranquilizer into Glen’s back.
Glen kept moving, knocking over a few trees in his pell-mell descent of the hillside. The little goblin scurried forward on tiny legs systematically firing the darts into the Sasquatch as he went.
Glen thundered out onto Barry’s lawn. His feet weren’t really acting the way they ought. A number of people stood by a moving van that had been pulled up onto the lawn. A lady in a mask, a Native American and some kind of scarecrow all stood watching as Glen fell to his knees.
“Barry…” Glen said around his thick tongue.
“I’ve got him, don’t worry,” a mobster with the head of a rat said as he dragged Barry across the lawn in front of Glen.
Glen collapsed onto his face onto cool grass.
“Ah, couldn’t he make it a few more feet? That bastard is built like a brick house,” Glen heard someone say.
“Quitcherbitchin’, maneater and give me a hand,” spoke a spectral voice.
“What about de vampire boy?” Glen heard a rich and deep Caribbean woman’s voice ask.
“Sorry, boss. He flew the coop,” the rat-faced mobster said.
Glen floated away on a dark cloud.
* * * *
The Northeast chapter of the Folk Tribunal set up shop in a derelict farm a few miles away. When the moving van and the black Lincoln Town Car pulled up to the weedy driveway, the resident poltergeist started making quite a fuss.
Lonnie McPherson died fifty years before and was angry ever since. He had been a jovial man in life, as long as the cows kept their milk running and put out for him whenever he got the itch.
When the weather turned cold and when he got the urge, he would often turn to his daughters. His wife, a parsimonious church-goer, and her holier-than-thou sister had walked in on Lonnie making sweet love to Gracie, a Holstein, one day after church. Lonnie didn’t have a choice but to brain both of the women with a shovel and feed them to his pigs.
He told everyone that the battle-axe had left with her sister on an extended visit, and nobody had asked about her since. It had delighted him how easy that had been, and he had wished he had been caught in his barn stall conjugations long before.
What hadn’t been easy was keeping his daughters obedient as they grew older. In the end they had ganged up on him and beat him to death with croquet mallets. He had laughed when the little bitches had been dragged off to the state woman’s penitentiary, but soon his laughter had died. His new existence did not rid him of his itch, nor did it give him any way to satisfy that itch. He quickly became a raving lunatic. Often kids drawn in sympathy to that erotic frustration or just on a bet had braved the place. None lasted long, nor did they talk about the strange and often painful sensations they had experienced in the house.
Now, some horrible creatures had pulled up and thought they could just settle in to his house. He threw things around to scare them, but they didn’t look all that scared. Finally, a negro woman wearing a mask came up the porch steps and started commanding him to leave. Lonnie had liked that. He whispered what he’d like to do to the curvaceous heifer, and even drew some diagrams for her on the dust of the porch floor.
The woman took off her mask and weird looking hair wrap and a he could see that she was both the ugliest and the most beautiful woman he might have ever seen. She also had a nest of hissing snakes for hair. He thought that was all right; it even struck him as kind of kinky. He paid her for these revelations by pulling out his invisible Johnson and waving it at her.
Their little encounter ended when the woman shouted a lot of Latin at him. That didn’t really faze Lonnie, as he had never been of the reading variety, and couldn’t make out a word of what she was saying. Finally, she gave up and
went back to the other creatures gathered around the van and issued a lot of hissing orders.
The next thing to approach the house did not rouse Lonnie’s spunk. A scarecrow walked up the steps and entered the house. Lonnie backed well away from it. The sight of a scarecrow coming for him was enough to make him shit his spectral trousers, but it was what was hiding inside the scarecrow, what made him move, that really frightened the farmer’s ghost. Lonnie ran down into the basement and tried to hide behind the old boiler. The scarecrow found him and without much ado, swallowed Lonnie’s spirit whole.
Then, the scarecrow and the Native American dragged the two hairy prisoners down to the cellar and beat them into consciousness.
* * * *
The Native American punched Glen in the head for perhaps the twelfth time. Barry strained against his chains, trying to keep the menacing scarecrow in his field of vision.
“Hey, enough already!” Barry said around his swollen lips. “Isn’t this the time when you ask us all kinds of questions and demand a confession?”
“We don’t need you to confess,” the scarecrow said. “We know that you are guilty. We only are waiting until your sentence is passed, and your fate is decided.”
“Could we at least know what we are guilty of?” Barry asked. The Native American turned his head and grimaced at Barry. The Native American had teeth filed down to points. He looked through black points in his madly white eyes. The Native American licked Glen’s blood off his knuckles and shuddered.
“You have broken ancient law as a member of the folk. You have exposed yourself to the humans and allowed them to publish your images in their press. You are a disgrace to all folk-kind.” The Native American punctuated this speech with a quick punch to Barry’s face.
“You know what I think of that?” Glen said and spit out a wad of blood. “I don’t give a folk!”
“Good one, Glenny!” Barry grunted. Glen managed a crooked grin; and they reached as far as their chains would go to touch each other’s palms. The scarecrow leapt into the air and landed upon their wrists. Both of the prisoners screamed in pain.
“Enjoy this little reprieve, when we come back we return for your lives,” the scarecrow said as he headed for the stairs.
“I so hope they let me eat the shit right out of you,” the Native American said as he followed the scarecrow.
“Oh, man, you eat shit!” Glen retorted.
“Shiteater, shiteater!” Barry chanted. The Native American turned and pointed dramatically at the two of them.
“Ooooh, we’re scared!” Glen said.
“Yeah, somebody help us, that bad man is going to eat our poopie!” Barry managed a strangled shout. The Native American shook his head and ascended the cellar steps.
“Glen,” Barry whispered, “I’m really scared.”
“I know, me too, buddy,” Glen confided. “What kind of thing is that shiteater?”
“I think he’s a Wendigo. That’s a cannibal spirit that possesses a crazy person.”
“Wonderful,” Glen said and retreated into silence. “Barry, I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”
“No, it isn’t, buddy. Don’t worry, we’re going to get out of here.”
“It was my stupid idea. It was dumb; and now we’re going to die,” Glen said.
“Don’t say that. We’re going to be okay. And when we get out of here, buddy, guess what. We’re going to Comic Con, I promise you,” Barry said. In the near darkness, Glen’s eyes glittered. He laughed.
“Dude that would be awesome.”
“Count on it. It will be.”
“Yeah…” Glen said halfheartedly. He gave a little pull against his chains and settled back against the cellar wall in defeat.
* * * *
Lady ZumZ, the gorgon, was a female with some high ambitions. She had moved her way up the ranks of her party to regional tribunal adjudicator. She had every intention of taking a seat at the folk council within the next couple of decades. She would do it, and she would drag her party to power with her. Lady ZumZ, wasn’t just some smooth talking islander with a will to power. She believed in her party, she believed that they were the only hope for the future of the folk.
Lady ZumZ’s party was none other than the Tepes Party. This party had been established by the famous Vlad Tepes himself. This renowned vampire believed that the world was made for domination by the folk, but that they must use their guile to corrupt mankind until the time was right for the folk to fully take over the world. It is important to note that Vlad Tepes did try to do this on more than one occasion. The final botched attempt can be read about by any human or folk in the epistolary novel entitled: Dracula. The members of the Tepes party insist that this novel is completely fictional and was written by an Irish Pooka of the opposition party to discredit their movement and shame the memory of their founder. They also believe that Tepes will return and will make a paradise on Earth for his chosen folk, who must remain worthy to his commandments.
Ironically, the members of this party have gleaned most of their commandments from the reviled novel itself. For instance: the members of the Tepes party will not imbibe in alcohol. When asked why, they merely quote their master: “I do not drink…wine.”
The pause is an important aspect of the performance of this scripture, and many a debate and thesis has been established upon the exact beats required to enact this pause. Also some believe a heavy Carpathian accent is also required in the execution of the sacred statement.
The opposition party also does not believe that the folk should reveal themselves. They do not, however, share the Tepes party member’s enthusiasm for conquest. It’s not that they do not want to rule, they think the idea is splendid, they just have a lot of doubts whether anything like that could really be pulled off. They mark as proof the very founder of the Tepes movement’s inability to even pull off an English harem without incurring the wrath of a crazy old man and a few love-struck gentlemen. The common rationalization for the position of the opposition party is that if the crazy and inept members of the Tepes party are so hell bent on world domination, then it must not be a very good idea.
A good thing for the mortals that walk among these dark and confusing races, is that should the parties ever realize that they constitute the same policies and are in fact the same entity, then the humans would never know what hit them.
There has been intermittently a third party of folk in their long history. These are usually founded by satiric characters and do not usually last very long. These “Humanists” believe that because of the similarities in interior political situations between mortal and folk governments, that the folk may not really be a separate race at all, but are just a bunch of has been humans with abnormal appetites. These humanist movements do not often last very long, as unlike the Tepes party, humanist party members tend to drink rather excessively.
Of the Tepes party, Lady ZumZ was a member; as was the scarecrow, who like all demonically possessed effigies really enjoys the thought of earthly domination. Ironically even quoting the Bible as proof that such a thing may occur at any time. Of the opposition party, the were-rat, Tony Pucce, and the Wendigo, John Longfish, were long-standing members.
Of the fifth member of the tribunal, the goblin with the German accent, no one knew his affiliation at all. Unknown to the group, who each assumed the others knew him well, no one had ever met him before.
* * * *
While Longfish and the scarecrow took out their pent up frustrations of daily life as a monster in this dog-eat-dog world upon the prisoners in the basement, Lady ZumZ oversaw Pucce as he readied the meeting table. The goblin busied himself scouting the house and its environs “for safety precautions”.
When Longfish and the scarecrow returned the five gathered around the old farmhouse kitchen table. All was ready. Pucce had painted a pentacle in blood across the top. Lady ZumZ produced a bone white candle for the center. Each member of the folk tribunal was instructed to take their seat at the appropri
ate direction. The goblin took his last, presumably in deference to the more experienced members. He plopped a sack beside his chair, scaled up and stood on the chair.
“From vat did you get ze blood, Pucce?” the goblin asked.
“Oh, I got that from your mother, pip squeak,” the mobster quipped.
“Oh, veally, I did not know she vas on her period right now,” the goblin said. Pucce chuckled and pointed an imaginary pistol at the goblin.
“Hey, good one! I like this guy. I do. I like him. He’s got the stuff, you know?” He slapped the wendigo, seated to his left. The wendigo gave him a toothy sneer. Silence descended on the table.
“So, how about those Patriots, huh?” Pucce asked. More silence ensued.
In the north sat John Longfish. He was preoccupied at the moment, working on a recipe he just developed. Up in Quebec, over the last few weeks he had raided a rich divorcee’s estate. The delicious divorcee had an affinity for standard poodles. He had needed to lie low, after being actively hunted by a group of Mountees for the past month or so. With nothing else to do, he had slowly extracted pieces of flesh from the still living woman and had tried using poodle meat as a base. In the end, the recipe had not just sustained him, but really got him going. Distantly, he worried about what this said about him.
Pucce sat in the East. His father, Fat Rat Pucce, had insisted that his second son get involved in local politics for the families sake. Pucce hadn’t been exactly excited about heading out to the boondocks, where they don’t even know what a decent cappuccino looks like, but he wasn’t going to complain. Right now he was on his old man’s good side. His older brother had botched up a job down in Jersey and the old man had chewed off his ear. They didn’t even mention his little brother anymore after the guy entered seminary.
The goblin sat between the East and the South, on the fifth point, of the upside down pentacle. This position stood for the underworld, in which all goblins are spawned and yearn to return. He watched the others with alert black eyes.
The Gorgon queen, Lady ZumZ sat in the south. She pulled off the big dread cap from her head and shook out her nest of serpents. As she waited for the exact time to begin, she caressed the sinuous serpents in long sensuous strokes. Pucce watched this with rapt and unabashed admiration.
