Hobgoblin

by John Coyne

  "You look beautiful!" Valerie exclaimed. Her mother had dropped her off at Ballycastle but she had run down to the guest house first so she and Scott could make an entrance together. "Neat, huh?" Scott spread his arms, displaying the gold velvet cape. "I made the leather vest myself two years ago at camp. The paladin doesn't actually wear one in the manual, but I figured it looked cool." "And those trousers!" "Mom got this canvas material and made the pants. Then she laced up the outside of each leg with the shoelaces, see?" "You look like Robin Hood or something." "Brian Boru!" Scott insisted. Stepping back into the center of the living room, he whipped out the long sword. "Come on, Scott, you'll cut yourself, or somebody." Valerie hated the very sight of the sword. "No, I won't. I'll be careful." "You're not taking that to the dance?" "Yes, and my slingshot and my shillelagh. Conor made them, too." "You can't dance, carrying all that on your belt." "I can't dance anyway." "Scott, you promised!" He shook his head. "I never said I would." "Yes, you did. Your mother heard you-let's ask her." "She isn't here." Valerie was disappointed. She had wanted Mrs. Gardiner to see her dressed up as the Lady with the White Hand. "Well, is she coming to the dance?" "I guess." Scott was adjusting his cape, making sure it fell in a smooth, straight drop from his shoulders. He wished he had talked to Conor earlier about getting one of the horses from the barn. It would have been great, he thought, riding up the lawn on a white stallion, like Brian Boru at the castle of Kilkenny. "Scott?" "What?" He looked up. "You're not listening. Is she coming to the dance or not?" "Sure. She only went for a walk. Mr. Brennan was looking for her earlier when I was up at the castle." "Aren't you worried?" "About what?" "I don't know." Valerie shrugged. "I mean, about something maybe happening to her." She glanced out the window. "It's really dark outside." "Val, she just went for a walk. Come on, let's go up to the castle. She's probably there." "How do you know?" "Because where else would she be but in the castle? You said yourself, it's dark outside."

  "Conor? Conor? Where are you, my lad?" the Black Annis was mumbling. It had gotten inside at the kitchen door and now stood in the dark pantry, distracted by the music. In defense against the strange sound, the Annis cupped its hand over its ears, trying to squeeze out the noise. Then it stumbled on in the dark, searching for the old door off the pantry. Ahead, through the entrance to the ballroom, the Black Annis saw the figures of dancers. The long, large shadows leaped off the white walls. The Annis crouched down, felt with its old, strong fingers for the panel. At the doorway to the ballroom, someone pushed through the crowd and came down toward the kitchen just as the Black Annis found the pressure point. "Hey, man, what the fuck?" Hank Simpson squinted at the crouched figure in the shadows. "Hey, who's this?" he grinned, then reached out to touch the short, powerful figure. The Black Annis swung wildly at the touch, clipped Simpson, then crouched down again. "Hey, shithead, who do you think you are?" Simpson turned back to the other seniors and shouted, "Nick! Kohler! Hey, Tyrone." He walked down the hallway a few yards, trying to get their attention. "Hey, Nick, have you seen Burns? I think it's him back here, dressed up like some weird freak with yellow hair." "Burns isn't coming," said Borgus. "He told me. He's working tonight." "Shit! Who's this, then? Look yourself." Hank moved to one side and let Borgus see. "What are you talking about, Simpson? Goddamn, you're flying, man. Get your face out of here." Borgus stood in the pantry doorway, looking into the empty kitchen. There were no lights on, but he could see well enough to know no one was in the room. "What shit are you smoking?" "I swear, Nick, I just saw him. I touched the fucker right there." He pointed uneasily to the empty spot. "Give me a jay." "I don't have nothin'. Dave's got it, I told you." Hank kept looking around, searching. "Nick, you know, I swear to God I saw someone. A weird little fucker. Maybe it was McClintock. I bet my ass it was McClintock." "Dave doesn't have it-I asked him," Borgus said, ignoring Hank's nervousness. "Dixon, maybe. He's always got a stash. Come on, let's find him." He walked quickly back to the ballroom and the long flickering shadows of dancers.

  Conor circled Barbara Gardiner. He couldn't leave her on the terrace, what with that gang of children less than twenty yards away. Someone had already opened the doors, they'd be outside soon, dancing on the flagstones. He knew that well enough from the old days. Conor leaned over and picked up the body. Her legs had stiffened and he staggered slightly from her weight, the awkwardness of her position. Her head rolled to one side and hung limp, as if her neck had snapped. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," he whispered, and then he gained his balance and carried her down the steps of the terrace and into the darkness beyond.

  "It's better than I had hoped," Scott said, smiling. He stood with Valerie upstairs, on the balcony overlooking the main entrance, watching Ballycastle fill up with students dressed as Hobgoblin characters. "You think so?" Valerie beamed, pleased with herself. "I don't recognize anyone. The costumes are just so neat!" She bounced up on her toes and leaned over the wooden banister, looking down at the crowd of kids. "There's a Morrigan," Scott said, pointing. "She's a war goddess but dressed like a raven." Valerie checked Scott's list for the Morrigan. "That's Pat Bell. God, I'd never recognize her in that outfit. Oh, Scott, this is just a super idea! Tell me who the others are." "See the guy with the green hair standing by the door? That's a Peg Powler." Scott pointed around the room, naming characters as he went. "Meg Moulach, the giant hag with one eye; a jenny Greenteeth; Friar Rush; a Shriker-they wander invisible in the woods and give off fearful screams." Scott kept pointing. "That's a Gentle Annie, the governor of storms. She seems nice but underneath she's evil. Gentle Annies are very common, especially during the summer, and their alignment is always evil." "You made Joe Higdon the Gentle Annie," Valerie said, looking again at the list. "Why?" "Because his name is in my notebook." "What does that mean?" Scott shrugged. "I started this list of kids who weren't nice to me. Borgus is on it, and Simpson." "How many kids?" Valerie was curious, surprised to learn about the list. Every day, it seemed, she learned something new about him. "I don't know, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two." "That many!" Valerie leaned forward over the banister to look up at Scott. "You mean that many kids were mean to you?" "Yeah, sort of. In one way or another." He was being deliberately vague, not wanting to admit that her name, too, had been put on the long list. "Gee." Valerie shook her head. "I think you're too sensitive," she said finally. "A lot of times, you know, kids say something, or do things, and they don't really mean anything at all. I know I do." She stopped and glanced quickly at him. "Am I on the list?" she asked quietly. "Yeah, you were, at first." "And you took me off?" Scott nodded. Valerie looked down at the kids in costume. Several had spotted her and waved, shouted for her to come down. The band had started again and they wanted her to dance. She nodded, but before she left Scott, she touched his arm. "Please, Scott, do me a favor, okay? Take them all off, will you? I mean, everyone is being nice to you now. This is going to be a great dance, thanks to you." She kept smiling. "Okay?" she whispered, gently squeezing his arm. For some reason, it seemed important to her. Scott looked away, stared down at the students. They were leaving the main hallway, going back into the ballroom. He spotted a Luridan, one of the goblins that lived on the Isle of Pomona, and Etain, the second wife of Midir the fairy king. Then behind her, standing alone in the hall leading to the Foundation offices, a Black Annis. "Well?" Valerie pressed. "Okay. I mean, it was just a game," he answered finally. "Thank you." She reached up and impulsively kissed him on the lips, startling him. "Is this the first time Brian Boru has been kissed in costume?" she asked, teasing. Scott nodded, too confused to speak. "Good," she whispered and tapped his cheek lightly with her fingers. Then she was gone; running quickly down the wide staircase to the first floor. Scott watched her skipping down the stairs. He could still feel the pressure of her lips on his. It made him feel great. Then he remembered the Black Annis. He didn't recall assigning anyone that character and he wished he had taken the list back from Valerie so he could check it. Once more he looked down the hall that led to his mother's office. Whoever she was
, the Black Annis was gone.

  Derek dialed the guest house half a dozen times in twenty minutes, then called the front gate and asked for Ted. "He's still out in the woods, Mr. Brennan," Lou explained. "It's been almost an hour, Lou. Can't you raise him on the radio?" "He walked into the woods, sir. Left the jeep by the river, he said." Lou paused, then realizing there was a problem, asked, "You want me to drive up and check out the jeep?" "Who's at the gate with you?" Outside Derek could still hear cars arriving, swinging up to the front doors, then parking beyond the main building. "Just myself, Mr. Brennan. Rick's off. There was one of the teachers here for a while, checking on the kids, but he walked up to the castle about twenty minutes ago." "Well, you better stay put. We can't leave the front gate open. Have Ted call when he gets back. I've got to go downstairs and check on this dance." He was furious now at himself for having agreed to let so many young people onto Ballycastle after dark. There would be a lot of problems if he wasn't careful. "Oh, have you seen Mrs. Gardiner, Lou? She didn't drive off the estate, did she?" "No, sir, not in the last hour." Derek hung up and again dialed the guest house. Barbara would have to go home first, he reasoned, to change before coming up to the castle. He let the phone ring a dozen times before he gave up.

  Scott Gardiner jumped onto the small bandstand and stopped the music, then blew a whistle to get everyone's attention. "It's time for Hobgoblin," he shouted. "Whatever team wins has tomorrow off from school." A cheer burst from the crowded floor and he let it die before adding, "Of course, tomorrow is Sunday." A roar of boos came back to him. Scott raised both hands, grinning. He was having a good time. "Okay! Okay! Hobgoblin!" The kids roared again, began to clap. Everything would be all right, he thought. They really did want to play. "Everyone has a map of Ballycastle, right?" he shouted. More cheers. "Now there are two teams, the Kelpies and the Spriggans, and everyone has been assigned to a team and a partner. When I blow the whistle, you and your partner go hide anywhere in the castle. In three minutes I'll blow the whistle again, and the two of you have to change hiding places. We'll do this ten times, so you have to think of ten good hiding places. At the end of the tenth round, come back downstairs to the ballroom-if you haven't been eliminated." There was a murmur of confusion. "Eliminated by who?" someone called out. It was Tracy, the Fideal, wrapped in a gauzy see-through dress with a white body-stocking underneath. "Good question," answered Scott. "But for the answer, you must listen to the tale of Ballycastle." Unfolding a sheet of notebook paper, he signaled the students to be quiet. When they were ready he began to read: "We are not tonight in Ballycastle, five miles from Flat Rock, but in Ballycastle of yore." "Yore who?" Borgus shouted from the floor. He was standing at the back, away from the press of students near the bandstand. A dozen voices shouted him down. "Fuck you," Borgus muttered back at them. "We are in the first Ballycastle, in the mountains of Donegal." Scott paused and the audience waited. Everything was okay. He had their attention. He began to loosen up, to make his story dramatic, as Mr. Speier would have done at Spencertown. "In the years before Tara became the home of Irish kings, there lived in the Land of Shadows, on the western coast of Erin, a beautiful woman called the Lady with the White Hand." Scott paused again and Valerie stepped forward. "After she died she became a spirit and lived in a laurel tree near her castle. But the lady was very lonely and sorely missed the gay companions of her youth. So every night, at twilight, she would rise up out of her tree and go drifting after travelers. "She was pale as a corpse and her clothes rustled like leaves when she moved, but it was her long, white hand that strangers feared." Valerie raised her hands over her head and the long sleeves slipped back to reveal arms painted dead white with theatrical makeup. The girls began to shriek excitedly. Scott blew his whistle for silence. He wanted everyone to hear the wind blowing against the stone walls, hear the old building moaning. It was more fun that way, scarier. "If the lady with the white hand touches a man's head, he is driven mad. If she lays her hand on a woman's heart, she dies." Scott furled his golden cloak over his shoulder dramatically. "Tonight the lady is abroad in Ballycastle. She will seek you as you hide, and if she finds you and touches you with her white hand, you are no more. Forthwith you are a zombie, doomed to return to the laurel tree and keep the lady company for all eternity. "If you elude the lady, however, you and your partner may return to the ballroom and your team will get two points." Laughing and cheering, the crowd of teenagers pushed for the doors. "Remember!" Scott halted them with a shout. "The lady's cold white hand will be everywhere. Woe to you if it finds you!"

  To avoid the students, Derek stayed away from the main staircase and the front entrance of the castle. Instead he went downstairs by the old servant's entrance to the south wing. Barbara might have taken all the teacher chaperones down there for a break. There was an office lounge in that wing and Barbara had keys to the liquor cabinet. He skipped quickly down the narrow back stairs. He would check the lounge before he started searching the woods. It was the last possible place she could be in Ballycastle. At the bottom of the steps he paused to flip on the overhead switch. In the blinking fluorescent lights he saw someone crouched in the dark a dozen feet from the stairway. Derek jumped involuntarily, then calmed down, realizing that the Hobgoblin game must; have started. Barbara had warned him that Scott planned on taking over the whole castle. "Sorry." Derek smiled, stepping around the figure. "I didn't plan on getting in the middle of the game." He caught a whiff of the costumed character as he passed. The smell was staggering. This was ridiculous. The kid must have doused himself in pig shit, he thought. "Is that odor part of your character?" he asked, trying to seem friendly. "What's that? Bugger off, lad," the Black Annis mumbled, still not stirring from its position against the wall. Derek stopped abruptly and turned back. "Say, the Foundation has gone to a good deal of trouble for this dance of yours." "Piss off," the Annis said. "Excuse me?" Bill Russell had told Derek how insolent these kids were, but this was too much. "What's your name, young man? It is a man, isn't it?" Derek was confused by the strange costume, the long yellowish hair. He still hadn't gotten a good look at the kid's face. "Where's Conor? Where's my man?" "Conor?" Derek backed off slightly, puzzled by the accent and the question. "My name is Derek Brennan. I'm the executive director of Ballycastle. What do you want with Conor, son?" Before the Black Annis could respond, the rear door of the mansion burst open. Ted Ward was standing in the beams of the outside floodlights. "Derek? Come here!" the guard shouted. "Just a minute, Ted." Derek turned his attention back to the squatting student. "Derek, now!" Ted Ward shouted. He was leaning against the open exit door, breathing hard, as if he had just run cross-country. Derek started for the door then, realizing that something was wrong. "I think you better get back with your friends," he told the student, brushing by him. As he hurried toward the end of the hall, he heard the boy get up and shuffle down the hallway, back to the ballroom. Ted Ward still stood in the open exit door, letting the cold October wind turn the narrow hallway into a wind tunnel. "Close the door, Ted. Jesus!" He rubbed his arms, shuddering. "She's dead," Ted whispered, stepping inside the hallway. "Dead? Who? What do you mean?" "The old lady. Maeve Donnellan. I went out there like you said to look for Barbara Gardiner and I found her." The fat man pushed his baseball cap up higher on his head. "Someone killed her, Derek. There's blood all over the cabin." He looked away, as if still confronted by the sight. "Oh, Christ." For a moment Derek was stunned. This was something he hadn't expected, couldn't explain, and in that moment he felt events slipping from his control. "Okay. Here's what we'll do. First find Conor." "I can't. I've already looked. And I can't find Mrs. Gardiner either," Ted confessed. "They cut the old woman up, Derek. Butchered her, for chrissake. What'll I do?" "Did you find any kind of weapon?" Derek asked. He tried to make eye contact, to help Ted's mind focus. "It must have been Conor," Ted went on, disregarding Derek's question. "Who else? He was the only one who knew she was out there." "A bear, Ted. A brown bear. Couldn't it somehow have gotten into the cabin?" Ted Ward w
alked off a few feet down the hallway, disgusted by the question. "No fuckin' bear killed that old lady, Derek. Hey, listen to me!" He raised his voice, as if to assume control. "She's been murdered. We got to get the police out here fast. And we got to find Barbara Gardiner. Whoever did it-Conor or whoever-then Barbara, she could be in trouble too. I mean, he's not going after you or me." What Ted was saying kept spinning in Derek's mind. For a moment, incongruously, he remembered the rumors about Ballycastle, the mad niece in the tower, dead women floating in bathtubs. "All right, Ted, go back down to the gate and make sure no one gets off the grounds. When the police come, have Lou take them out to the cabin. Make sure everything is secure at the gate, then keep looking for Conor. He's around somewhere. I'll telephone the police now from my office, and I need to tell someone on the board. I don't want them to hear about this on the news." He sighed, exhausted by what he had learned. Now Ballycastle no longer had a secret to hide. Instead, he thought ruefully, it had a killer.