Hobgoblin

by John Coyne

  "This way," Scott said, grabbing Valerie's hand. The crowd of students had already rushed the staircase, running for their first position. "Scott, I can't find all of them." "You don't have to. Come on." He pulled her after him, out of the ballroom and into the deserted pantry. "This castle is honeycombed with backstairs and hidden passageways," he whispered. "We can go from room to room without anyone seeing us. Most of the secret entrances open up behind curtains or from bookshelves-I've checked. You can just slip out of the darkness and touch them, get them out of the game." "It's like a horror movie, secret passages and stuff." She grabbed his arm, excited again. "But here's the thing, Valerie." Scott was suddenly serious. "You can tag all the Spriggans you want. But don't touch the Kelpies-except for Borgus and his pals." "I thought the idea was to send as many zombies as possible down to the ballroom." "No. The idea is to get Borgus. And nothing will get him better than if he and the other jocks are the only ones on their whole team who get caught-and by a girl." "Scott, that's great" Now Valerie understood the plan, and her eyes gleamed at the thought of Borgus's humiliation when he had to stand up in the ballroom and admit he'd been clumsy enough to get caught Compared to what he had done to her, she was letting him off easy. "Okay," said Scott. "Ready to go upstairs?" "Ready!" He felt along the paneling until he found the wooden knob, spun it slightly and the door swung open. "Go ahead," he said. "There's no lights." Valerie looked up the long, narrow staircase to the second floor. "There's some. It seeps in from rooms and hallways. And I've got a flashlight." "I'm scared," Valerie admitted. She shivered and stepped back against Scott. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her from behind. "It's okay. Don't be a scaredy-cat." "I can't help it," she whispered. She bent her head, hoping he would kiss her on the back of the neck. "Don't be afraid, Val. I'm going to be right with you." He pushed her forward and up the stairs, pulling the door closed behind them.

  "Hey, come with me." Nick Borgus grabbed his friends and motioned them into a corridor, away from the crowd of students who were pairing off in the entrance way. "What about the game?" Simpson protested. He glanced down at his map. "You and me gotta find our hiding place." "Fuck our hiding place," Borgus answered. "Shit, man, turn on some lights," Tyrone asked. Scott had lowered the lights before he left, and now Ballycastle was a warren of half-lit hallways and shadowy staircases. "Shut up!" Nick demanded. He glanced over his shoulder, saw that the entranceway was emptying. Most of the students had filtered off into the huge building. "But someone just grabbed my ass," Tyrone complained. The football players broke into giggles. In the deep interior of the long corridor, they could see only the dim shapes of each other and a block of light from the entranceway. They glanced around in the pocket of darkness, uneasy in the strange building. They jabbed at each other, nudged shoulders and grabbed ass on purpose, their proximity giving them only a little comfort. "What about the game?" Simpson asked. "Don't you want to beat Gardiner?" "The game is to get Dunn, Hank. Forget all that other Hobgoblin shit" "But that's not the game, Nick," Kohler interrupted. "That's not the way we're supposed to play." "Yeah, and preppie's not supposed to nun the wrong way in football either." Nick glanced back down the long corridor. The main entrance was deserted. "Okay, let's go," he said. He led the football players into the lighted area. "Here's what we do," he began, laying his map flat on the reception desk. "Simpson and me were going to hide in the pool room-`billiard room' they call it here. Where were you and Kohler headed, Tyrone?" "This bedroom up on the third floor. I figure it'll take this girl awhile to climb that high." "Yeah, it might," Borgus agreed. "Except the preppie's going to see to it that she comes looking for us first. She's just going to keep checking every room until she finds us. "So we fool her. We don't go into any rooms. We hide outside in the hallways, two of us at both sets of stairs, front and back. And when she comes looking for us, we grab her." "Hey, that's cool." Hank slapped Borgus on the shoulder. "But what if she touches us with her white hand? Then we're dead, man." "Goddamnit, Simpson! Don't you understand? Once we get Dunn, we take her someplace nobody would ever look-the stables, maybe, or out in the woods. And then we make the preppie buy her back. After what happened in that graveyard, he'll give us anything we say. It's a great deal-we scare the preppie shitless, plus we make some money on the game." "I don't know," said Tyrone. "I was kind of looking forward to playing." "We will be playing, man," said Borgus. "Just not the way Gardiner figured. It's like the coach always says, right? Always make the other guy play your game."

  Derek ran up the back stairs and headed for his office near the front of the mansion. There were students upstairs now, running through the halls. He was two steps across the carpet in his office when he saw her, and he stumbled on the rug at the incongruous sight. She was lying on the conference table, her knees drawn up stiffly, her head not quite touching the table. "Barbara?" he asked, but he knew that she wasn't asleep. He stepped closer and reached out to touch her, to let the warmth of her flesh disprove the evidence of his eyes. But she was not warm. "Please," he whispered, as if to talk her back to life with his voice. But the touch of her cold skin chilled him, left him shivering. In one single flash he remembered her at his house, in his bed. He kept thinking that they hadn't really had a chance, that everything between them had been just beginning. "Please," he said again, as if this time he were asking for forgiveness. Then he thought of Scotty and the dozens of teenagers filling the castle. He stumbled to his desk and grabbed the phone, dialed, whispered to the operator that she had to give him the police. "State Police. State your name and address before proceeding to give any other information." The flat, bored voice of the dispatcher shocked him. She didn't, couldn't understand what he had seen. "This is Derek Brennan, the executive director of Ballycastle," he began. He was too excited to know whether his voice was trembling or not. "Two people have been killed here tonight, two women, and we need the police immediately." "Could you speak up?" the police dispatcher said. "I'm having trouble hearing you." "I said we have two corpses here," he shouted angrily, then suddenly crouched down behind his desk, pulling the phone with him. Conor, he realized, could still be within hearing-watching, waiting. "We have a deranged man here at Ballycastle," he said into the phone more calmly. "He's already murdered two people. And there's a Halloween party going on for the high school students from Flat Rock." "Hey. Is this some kind of joke?" "Jesus Christ!" He shouted into the telephone. "I told you-I'm the director of the Foundation. There are two dead bodies here already, soon to be joined by half the class of '81 if you don't get some cops out here, sister!" For a long moment there was silence, as if the dispatcher was debating what to do next. Then she said curtly, "I'll radio a trooper." "I'd appreciate it," Derek answered. Then he hung up the phone. The initial silence was comforting. It was as if he had fallen asleep. He had done his job. The police had been called. Help was coming. Momentarily he remembered the board and the necessity of informing the chairman. That was unimportant now. He had to do something about the kids. The chaperones would have to find them all, get them together in one safe location. Then he would have to tell Scott about his mother. His mind faltered for a moment, then went on. And Conor. They had to find the crazy old man and stop him before he killed somebody else.

  "No one's here yet," Scott whispered. He had opened the narrow door leading into the billiard room. "Okay, let's go." He grabbed Valerie's arm and pulled her after him. "Where are we?" she whispered, looking around. At one end of the large, high-ceilinged room was a fireplace, at the other a billiard table covered with a white sheet, as if it were a body. "This is where I figured some of the football players would be. They wouldn't pass up a crack at the pool table." "Well, let's look somewhere else, then," said Valerie. "No, I've got to blow the second whistle," Scott decided. "This is taking too long." "Don't leave me." Valerie grabbed his arm. "I don't like this game. It's too scary." "Come on, it's just getting to be fun," Scott smiled, pleased with himself. Everyone was just beginning to get frightened. In another round or two, he knew
, they'd be too scared to leave one room and go to the next. "You're okay," he told Valerie. "If someone comes in after I blow the whistle, just jump out. All you have to do is touch them. Then you give the person this and make him wear it." He opened his leather sack and pulled out a paper skeleton's mask. The painted white skull glowed brightly in the dark. "Scott, how did you do that?" "It's fluorescent, see? Once a person becomes a zombie, he glows in the dark. Then the zombie will go scare the shit out of everyone when they're changing rooms. I mean, no one is going to know who they are." "You never told me about these." Curiously, she examined the illuminated mask "Where did you get them?" "In town. At the K-Mart. Look." He pulled the mask over his head. In the dark comer of the billiard room his head glowed like a skull. "Oh, God, take it off," Valerie said. "It gives me goose bumps." "Hide it away until you get someone." He gave her the sack of masks. "What do I do then? Where do I go next?" She didn't like being left alone. "Just send the zombies out into the hall and slip back into the hidden passage. I'll be back right after I blow the whistle." Scott stepped into the passageway and pulled the door closed, disappearing. "Shit," Valerie whispered. For a few seconds she stood quietly, waiting for the whistle to send everyone scurrying. But it would take Scott time to reach the balcony. In the silence she heard the sound of two girls giggling. Valerie recognized Tracy's voice and smiled. It made her feel better, knowing her friend was near her in the big house. She would get Tracy first, Valerie decided. Scott was right; Hobgoblin was just getting to be fun.

  Conor Fitzpatrick did not know what to do. He had left the body in Derek's office-out of the way of the children, he thought-then gone back to his small apartment in the barns and put on a pot of tea. His hands were shaking and he had to calm himself down. "I'll have a cup of tea," he mumbled. "And then, with the help of God, I'll put a stop to this." He spoke aloud, as if trying to calm himself with the sound of his own voice. "Oh, dear God," he whispered, thinking again of Barbara Gardiner, of how her head had flopped over when he felt her shoulder. "Ah, Maeve," he sighed. The tea pot was boiling and he went back to the stove, took out a bag of Irish breakfast tea and dropped it in the cup. "We shouldn't have done it, Maeve," he went on, mumbling again in the silence, but speaking now in Gaelic. He had lost his use of English. "It was a foolish thing, girl, thinking we could hide it from them all." Conor stopped. He heard the barn door slide open. Someone was trying to be quiet about it, he realized, sneaking into the stables. Conor flipped off the apartment lights, leaving himself in the dark. He leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. He'll be the death of me yet, Conor thought. I should have killed him then, that day in the woods, and had done with it. "Oh, Conor," Maeve had said when he carried Fergus to her. The master had lain between them, unconscious in the big four-poster bed. Maeve had leaned over him, pressed a cold cloth to the wound. "I'll take care of him, Conor. He'll be all right, wait and just see," she whispered. "We'll keep him here with us; we won't let him run such risks again. They'll never know. Can't we just say the poor man died? They'll never find us here, Conor. Why, the woods are deep enough to hide a family of tinkers." "Don't be daft, woman. Even if Himself agrees to it when he's well again, we'd need a death certificate, and a will, and a body to bury in his place." "Himself could fix it, Conor-him and that New York doctor of his, Smyth. We'll say that Nightfall killed him, cut him up so awful no one but Dr. Smyth could see the body." "And bury an empty casket up on Steepletop?" Conor tried to think it through. It was a reckless plan, but Himself would have to risk it or deal with Nina Millay and her family. She'd believe Fergus had died of Conor's blow, and her father would see the wisdom of the Nightfall cover story. "Would you do it for me, Conor?" Maeve was asking. "Would you do it for my Fergus? Don't let them take Himself away from Ballycastle."

  Outside his own office, in the small hall closet, Derek found the two girls hiding. "I'm sorry," he said, standing in the door, "but I'm afraid the party is over." He did not explain why. It would do no good to have a bunch of screaming teenage girls running frightened through the castle. The two girls did not move. He was not sure they were girls; the darkness and their costumes hid their faces. But both figures were small and clinging to each other. "Where can I find Mr. Russell, girls?" He was getting impatient. The girls did not answer. "All right, that's enough," he said and reached for them, to pull them out of the enclosure. "Who are you?" one of the girls whispered. "My name is Derek Brennan, and I am the director of Ballycastle." He spoke confidently, assuming the girls would do whatever he told them. "Go downstairs, please, into the ballroom and if you see anyone else tell them the game is over." Then he walked away, down the length of the north wing. It would be best to proceed that way, he thought, to search for students room by room. At the end of the long hallway, standing near the large windows overlooking the terrace, he saw a costumed figure. He was standing as still as the armored knights, watching the hallway. What light there was from the harvest moon caught his eyes, made them flash. "Say, son, go downstairs. The game is over," Derek directed. "Go downstairs yourself, son," the Black Annis answered. "Oh, it's you." Derek kept his distance, yet even at half a dozen feet he caught the boy's odor. "Let's go," he ordered. "The party's over." He tried to sound tough. "I told you, lad-fuck off." Derek stepped closer, tried in the semidarkness to make out who this student was. "Okay, that's enough bullshit." He reached out and grabbed the Annis's arm and the man swung at him, enraged. It wasn't a high school student, Derek saw. This was no teenager dressed up in long yellow hair and old, tattered clothes. "Hey, what is this?" The Black Annis swung his right fist and caught Derek in the neck, knocking him hard against a display case filled with Waterford crystal. The glass crashed like ice breaking. Derek couldn't get his breath. The blow had jammed his Adam's apple up into his throat. He rolled to one side and tried to stand, his mind working furiously. He had been wrong. It wasn't Conor they had to fear. It hadn't been Conor Fitzpatrick at all, or Maeve Donnellan. And in that sudden insight before dying, Derek understood who this stranger really was. "You!" he exclaimed, raising his head to catch the mad eyes of the old man. The Black Annis caught him by the shoulders, jerked him up and tossed Derek against the wall. When he hit, his spine popped. Whimpering in pain, he began a slow slide to the floor. He never made it. The Annis turned, yanked the Knight Templar's lance from his armored fist and drove it into Derek's chest, slicing through his rib cage and clear through to the other side. Derek hung like a butterfly, pinned to the wall.

  "Maeve, would that be you?" Conor asked in Gaelic. He opened the apartment door and looked into the blacksmith shop. The wide doors were pushed open. He could see moonlight beyond the entrance. "Maeve?" he whispered. She would have come looking for Fergus, he knew, just as she had that night at Barbara Gardiner's house. She had been sure Fergus was inside, drawn by the lights and perhaps a glimpse of the beautiful Mrs. Gardiner. He hadn't been there, of course, not then. He had waited till the night the children were in the house alone. He'd always liked the young ones, Fergus had. Conor stepped into the dark shop and closed the apartment door behind him. He was safe here. He knew his way around the blacksmith shop. Maeve had not opened the door, he realized. It was Fergus who had come to get him. "Mr. O'Cuileannain, now where would you be, sir?" Conor asked, speaking softly in Gaelic. He moved toward the cold forge and lifted a set of long metal tongs from the hearth. The scrape of metal was the only sound in the shop. "Mr. O'Cuileannain, it's time we went back home, sir." There was a man against the wall, a lump of a figure he could barely make out in the darkness. Conor raised the tongs with both arms and sidled toward the corner. He would have to strike at once, kill him with one blow. With Fergus he would have no second chance. "God bless you, sir, and keep your soul," Conor said in prayer and using all his strength, swung at the figure. The shotgun blew Conor away. The short range blast lifted him up and drove him across the room. The shower of pellets devoured his stomach, ripped apart his chest. He landed against the opposite wall in a heap of flesh. "Jesus H. Christ." T
ed Ward came out of the corner. He had fired both barrels and the smell of gun powder burned in his nostrils. "Jesus H. Christ," he kept whispering. The sound of his own voice kept him stable. He would be all right, he knew, if he didn't choke on the smell of flesh and blood. Like a swimmer breaking the surface for air, Ted stumbled outside and gasped. The night was cold and clear and he felt a sense of relief, realizing he was alive. Even with the shotgun in his hands, he had been frightened at the sight of Conor coming at him waving the tongs, mumbling in Gaelic, crazy out of his mind. But now everything would be okay, he told himself. Conor was dead. Maeve Donnellan was dead. There was nothing more to hide.