GOBLIN

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

In nightmarish fashion my legs moved toward the dark corner of the room without being able to stop them. You aren’t supposed to be able to smell in dreams but I caught a whiff like burnt almonds. A tiny silver-bell attached to a heavy-timber threshold tinkled once as I opened the rough plank door. Warped wooden stairs led down into the darkness. God in heaven! I didn’t want to go down there! My legs refused my frantic commands to stop. Floating cobwebs investigated my cheeks with a spider’s touch and icy daggers stabbed at my spine with every step I took.

            When I’d crept about halfway to what looked like a dirt-floor bottom a squat figure suddenly stepped from the darkness. An overlarge swollen nose jutted out and down from a dried-apple face in which gleaming black eyes stared upward with murderous intent. There was no railing and wooden splinters tore into my finger-tips as I tried to slow my descent. Pudgy fingers with dirty nails like ragged claws reached upward for me. The touch was as cold as death …

            I woke and sat up in bed without a scream … I had no breath. It took a few moments to realize where I was. I was home in the fold-down bed in the living room that I shared with my brother Mike. “You better hurry you don’t want to miss the bus!” my mother called from the tiny kitchen. This was the third night in a row that I’d had the same horrible dream. Each night the dark fantasy got a little longer and with greater detail. Last night the creature had touched me. Tonight would he grab my arm and lead me into the darkness?

            I couldn’t handle another night of terror. Using a child’s logic even though I was five months past six-years old I folded my arms and began to pray. Father in heaven … if you will make the dreams stop I will not have them again until my wedding night.

            “Rupert Lynn James! Fold up that bed and get in here right now! You don’t want to miss the first day of school and I don’t have a car to drive you!”  I lifted the frame at the head of the mattress until it clicked into place and then did the same to the bottom. Locking the two halves together with a slotted metal bar. I covered the bed neatly with an old pink quilt and rolled it against the wall next to the rattling furnace heater.

My older brother was already drinking milk from a bowl behind a box of Kellogg’s cereal. He slapped my hand and grabbed it from me when I tried to look at the illustration for a free Model Guards Bandsman on the back. Mike smiled as he dropped the cellophane-wrapped plastic figure, molded to look like a Buckingham Palace guard, into his shirt pocket. “I had to reach all the way to the bottom for it!” I noticed the spilled cornflakes on the table and the floor.

I ate my own cereal as fast as I could then my mother herded me into the bathroom before she dragged my winter coat from the closet brushed off some dust and then dabbed at several stains with a damp rag. “Be sure to comb your hair after you brush your teeth. You don’t want to look like a hooligan!”

The ride into Cloverdale was a dizzy adventure. I’d never ridden in a long car with more than one back seat. There were more than twenty with a narrow isle between two rows. There were only a couple of kids I knew … the rest were strangers.

Mike left me at the foot of very wide stairs right after we entered the two-story brick building. He was just starting third grade and his classroom was on the second floor. I clutched tightly to the slip of paper my mother had given me looking for an adult in a sea of tiny faces … some of them were crying. “Dern room five,” the woman with the sharp nose and glasses read after she snatched the paper from my hand. “It’s the third door on the left.” She pointed.  The bewildered look on my face must have made her angry. She frowned as she dragged me down the hallway.

            Mrs. Dern smiled just before she began each lesson. Only a few things I could comprehend. We read from tiny books an older student passed out. By recess I knew a few the words … Dick, Jane … Spot. The girls surrounded three swings and a merry-go round on a playground set while I followed the boys to a grassy field. I had no mitt. I looked on shyly as two bigger boys took turns choosing up sides. I didn’t know much about baseball but I was sure I could learn. My heart sank … as I was chosen last.

My first day at school was a jumbled mixture of change, apprehension and homesickness but that night … the bad dreams stopped.

-------2-------

            I had to be the loneliest kid in school until the start of fourth grade. That was the year my parents moved into town from the country. Suddenly I was surrounded by neighbors most with children about my age. Nights were spent sleeping out in each other’s backyards, wandering the streets of Cloverdale after midnight, filching apples from strangers’ orchards and tumbling in the coin operated dryers at the local Laundromat for just a dime. Summers were forever for nine-year olds.

            Winters were what we made them. Snowplows were unheard of. We caught rides all over town holding tight to the back bumpers of cars whose tires spun on the packed snow and ice. If you had any guts at all you “hooky-bobbed” the cop car as he made his rounds. We were fearless.

            By age eleven we were habitual Friday night movie goers. The theatre tickets were thirty cents if you were under twelve. We watched all the Frankie Avalon – Annette Funicello beach movies and one of my friends could talk just like Harvey Lembeck: When Eric Von Zipper likes someone, they stay liked! James Bond gave us our first taste of sex and A Hard Day’s Night showed us girls were crazy about guys who could play music.

            I sat on the cement steps of my house and listened to the band playing two doors down and I knew they were good; too bad they were already full up. We spent hours going through stacks of record albums at the local drugstore. My best friend talked me into buying an album by a black guy named Jimi Hendrix. I’d never heard of him but when I got home I listened to his songs for hours and learned Purple Haze by ear. The Bass player for the band two doors down came to my room in the basement while I had my amplifier cranked to the max … and was blown away by the distortion … and the smoke.  It was my job to tell the former lead guitar player he was no longer in the band.

            We played mostly High School victory dances and had a strobe light on a high pole that we could activate with a car’s floorboard dimmer switch mounted in a wooden box. The entire system was powered by an electric-fence generator and a twisted neon tube inside a huge reflector made by the local electronics genius. Girls were fun to watch in the flashing lights and fights even more exciting.

            The band broke up after four years of High School and one year of College but by then we were all moving in new directions. I got married when I was twenty one and she was just seventeen … you know what I mean.

Even after thirteen years I remembered the covenant my six year-old self had made. As my wedding day approached I grew more and more anxious. I spent hours in the library researching dwarfs and other little people. To the best of my knowledge the thing I’d seen in my nightmares was a Goblin a small and grotesque creature from the middle-ages.

After the traditional consummate sex - not the first time by a long shot … I lay awake wondering about the ugly little man and if I’d have the nightmare … the plank door, the stairs, the darkness and him. To my great relief … I woke the next morning with no bad dreams. Perhaps my bargain was just a childish fantasy.

-------3-------

Thirteen years later, my marriage began to break up and I was devastated. She was in love with someone else. My brother described it best: Divorce is like tripping when there is nothing in your way. My parents forced me to eat food along with the cigarettes I chain-smoked and I struggled through the bad times. Depression is a deep dark hole in your mind that only time fills in.

I met my second wife at work and it was love at first sight even though she was already married. I brought my guitar to work and sang songs to her during breaks. Her marriage was failing and she longed to have children. After her divorce we began dating. The wedding ceremony was rushed because she was already pregnant. We honeymooned in Jackson Hole Wyoming, the playground of the rich and famous.

I thought about the goblin that night, I’d given him the name Hobb years before, and wondered if he would appear in my dreams. I prayed that he wouldn’t. What twenty seven year-old woman wants to wake up in bed with her new husband screaming? Hobb was a no show, no splintered plank door, no stairs leading into the darkness and thank God! No ugly little man.

-------4-------

The marriage was a success. We raised three children and my wife lived to bounce nine grandchildren on her knees. My wife was so much younger than me I always thought I’d go first. Cancer never plays by the rules. The best part of me died with her.

I was eighty-eight years old and very lonely. The doctor says I have a bad heart and can go anytime. Molly worked in a garden shop and I stopped in one spring to buy red-potato seed. She was easy to talk to and at my age that’s what counts the most. After dozens of dinners and long walks by the river we decided to get married. I’d sold my house years before just to make ends meet and we decided to move into her parent’s old house in the country. I’d never been there … it was to be a surprise.

We were married by the county clerk without ceremony this morning. Molly just drove with her daughter into town to buy stuff to make a wedding cake. I’ve been here alone the last half-hour just thinking … remembering my life. When Molly showed me around the place, a small farm with an old barn and empty corrals, I didn’t remember seeing the old plank door in one dark corner of the rustic kitchen. It looks familiar … probably leads to a basement … or a cellar. There is a smell … burnt almonds. Perhaps Molly is baking … but the oven is cold.

-------5-------

A few minutes ago just as I finished my coffee I thought I heard a sound … coming from below … my hands are shaking … it is time.

I’m standing up now. My legs are moving toward the dark corner of the room and I can’t stop them. A tiny silver-bell, attached to a heavy-timber threshold, tinkles once as I open the rough plank door. Warped wooden stairs lead down into darkness. God in heaven! I don’t want to go down there! My legs refuse my frantic commands to stop. Floating cobwebs brush my cheeks with a spider’s touch and icy daggers stab at my spine with every step I take.

            Halfway to what looks like a filthy dirt-floor bottom a squat figure suddenly steps from the darkness. An overlarge swollen nose juts out and down from a dried-apple face in which gleaming black eyes stare upward with murderous intent. This time he smiles. There is no railing and wooden splinters tear into my finger-tips as I try to slow my descent. Pudgy fingers with dirty nails like ragged claws reach upward for me.

The goblin’s touch is as cold as death …

THE END ?