The Jacob goblin didn’t care; its mind was on one thing and as soon as Crud was gone, he made his way into the goblin king’s lair.
The place was cavernous, with a ceiling that disappeared into mists above where winged serpents took up residence—pets of the goblin king that ate the useless ones the king no longer cared for. Hearths burned along the walls, many filled with roasting humans, some alive, others long dead. It took decades for a human to burn to death in goblin fire, the torture seemingly endless for the weak-fleshed beings. In the center of the cavern flamed a pyre made of human bones. Its fumes provided the goblin king’s lair with magical energy.
The bones came from the lower levels after the meals were eaten. Goblins of all shapes and sizes carried them to the king’s lair and placed them along the walls like rows of firewood. Mountains of bones took up corners of the room, the bones picked clean and readied to be added to the bone pyre, made into weapons or furniture.
The Jacob goblin approached the king, the giant demon seated on a gloriously hideous throne made of bone and flesh that overlooked the cavern. Two goblin guards—not that the king needed protection—decorated in armor stood in front of the king. One brandished a mace with a bone handle. At the end of the chain was a human head punctured with splintered bones that acted as spikes. The other goblin wielded an axe, the blade a human pelvic bone. The edges were sharpened and reinforced with goblin magic. The guards’ flesh was riddled with battle scars and their eyes glowed fiery orange. Cockroaches scuttled along their skin, keeping it clean and healed, but the six-legged critters also gave them something to eat when they grew hungry.
The Jacob goblin held out its open hand, revealing the eyes. The guards snorted and nodded, then moved aside. The Jacob goblin walked forth and up the stone steps. The goblin king sat straight-backed and proud. It was the largest of all the goblins, standing over ten feet tall. He was a specimen of muscle, sinew and fear. Hellfire blazed behind its clear orb eyes. It saw all that was in front of it, able to focus on everything. It had no peripheral vision. Its claws and teeth were living fire that could cut through the toughest steel. It ate the flesh of any and all beasts and had been made from pure evil. It was said the goblin king was an extension of the Devil himself, but no one knew for sure. Every goblin was a part of it, each creature made from its own essence. The green army it wielded was like a slow growing and powerful cancer, bred to destroy civilizations both large and small.
Though powerful in its world, the goblin king almost never set foot on earth. The demon needed its children to do its bidding, unless it was specifically summoned. The summoning spell set forth rules that had to be followed and allowed it time on earth. The spell the shaman performed allowed the goblin king to come to Earth for a period of six days, a number the devil gave all his high minions.
Though it mostly remained in its hellish dimension, the goblin king had found loopholes in the spiritual laws, ways that allowed it to experience its children’s sensations. Every bite a goblin took, the demon tasted. Everything—animal, insect or human—a goblin hurt or killed, the demon partook in and enjoyed.
No matter how many times it experienced killing through its children, the sensations were nothing compared to when it actually got to partake in the slaughter. And it was thanks to the humans themselves, their greed and need for vengeance, that it and its fellow demon and goblin brethren were given power and the ability to torture and kill mankind. Death and pain were the reason for its existence. It had been born of such things so many millennia ago and would exist to spread its hostile religion.
The Jacob goblin, like all goblins, knew all of this. The goblin king gave his children the knowledge. The king wanted them all to know it was a god, their god. A god to fear and obey. A god that would reward them for spreading its misery, but would also strike down all that disappointed it. Failure was not tolerated. Those that failed were either eaten alive by the winged serpents, where they’d be digested for hundreds of years, or given to their brothers and sisters as food. Cannibalism was a much practiced way of life among the goblins.
The Jacob goblin headed up the crushed and melded bone-stone staircase and fell to one knee before its king. It lowered its head and held out the eyes it had taken from its former parents—the blue belonging to his mother, the brown his father. The optical nerves draped over his palms like thin, wet noodles.
The goblin king grunted, but the Jacob goblin heard pleasure in the sound. He was then commanded to stand, and he did. The eyeballs were snatched from his palm, the goblin king’s fire claws gouging his flesh, the pain almost pleasurable. The king held the eyes up in front of its face by the nerves. The giant goblin grinned, many of its flaming teeth revealed. The Jacob goblin felt the heat and basked in its master’s power. But it was still fearful, for the goblin king was a merciless and wicked beast that would kill without a moment’s hesitation. Maybe he wouldn’t like the eye color. Maybe the Jacob goblin had taken too long. Anything was possible. The goblin king was known to crush and devour new goblins that didn’t satisfy it.
The goblin king opened its mouth. Its multiple wormlike tongues slithered out and coiled around the eyes, then retracted, taking the morsels with it. The king’s eyes blazed brighter as it chewed, and the Jacob goblin knew its master was pleased. For such a small meal, the king took his time masticating.
Unable to control itself, the Jacob goblin raked a claw across its abdomen and drew blood, needing the pain to ground him. To celebrate or make a noise while the king ate was forbidden.
Finally, the goblin king’s eyes settled back to their normal blaze and it spoke, telling the Jacob goblin he had done well. The king then handed him his reward, a necklace made from the bones of children, imbued with the king’s fiery essence and proof that it had pleased its master.
The Jacob goblin groveled at the king’s feet and thanked the demon repeatedly, then asked how it could serve its highness again.
“You shall bring me a child,” the goblin king said. “For soon my army will be ready and the humans will feel my wrath again.”
Chapter Seven
Because of the brutality of the crime and the missing kid, the FBI had been informed. According to the feds, the case was not unheard of. They would run the scenario through their database and see if anything similar came up. Off the top of Special Agent Howard’s head, the man Hale had spoken to, there were no current cases related to the one on Roanoke Island. But the country was large and Howard wasn’t familiar with all of them.
Hale didn’t want another case like the Brown case to be found. He didn’t want to know that another family had gone through something so horrific. But if it had happened before, if the killers had done this previously, hopefully the feds would find it and have more to go on.
In the meantime, Hale was told to go ahead with his investigation and would remain in charge of the case. Special Agent Howard wasn’t going to send any of his people to the island, yet. Hale found this shocking, but figured the FBI had their hands full, and unless the situation worsened, he would be on his own.
It took a day before Howard got back to him. The feds came up with no similar crimes within the last twenty years. The closest ones were all gang, cartel and mob related. Based on the preliminary findings, the Brown case was not one of those cases. They found no criminal activity associated with the Browns. No sour business dealings either. No money owed. The Browns had no criminal records and weren’t known or suspected to be involved with the drug trade. Kidnappings were kidnappings. Some violent, some not. But according to the FBI, the one thing none of them had was the green slime. There was no record of such a substance in any files, kidnapping cases or any other crime scenes. This further differentiated the Brown case from any others.
After the call from Special Agent Howard, Hale got on the line with the coroner’s office. He’d been waiting on the results of the green substance, hoping it would be the break he needed, but
it still hadn’t been identified yet. Frustrated, he barked into the phone, saying he needed it ASAP, then slammed the receiver down.
He leaned back in his executive leather chair and pounded a fist on his desk. He hated not being able to do anything. He felt useless. There was nothing to go on. He needed those results. If the green slime was chemical in nature, they could use that to get a lead. Find out where the stuff was made and go from there.
For now, at least the Amber Alert was still active. News stations were still showing Jacob’s picture. The story was national, which would help. But there was nothing to go on. The crime seemed random, as if the Brown family had been stumbled upon and targeted for no other reason than convenience. The kidnappers were simply passing through and having fun, as sick and demented as that fun had been.
Chapter Eight
Kaley lay on her bed with the covers pulled up to her nose. Her blue eyes stared across the room. Every time a vehicle drove by, her room flooded with shadows that flittered over the walls and ceiling like ghosts. Her stuffed animals resting on her dresser and shelves—for she had many—appeared to shift in unison. Their faces became menacing and their bodies grew grotesque for a moment before the darkness swallowed them up again. They’d never bothered her before. In fact, they had always brought her comfort—especially Charlie Bear. But now Charlie Bear was scaring her, the plushy’s eyes seeming to watch her with malice. His smile was now a devious grin, like the teddy bear in the horror movie she watched earlier that night. It was only a thirty-minute film, made by Mindy’s brother—Mindy being her best friend.
Mindy’s brother, Daniel, was in film school and had made the movie and sent her a copy. His professor had given it an A and he was going to play it at festivals, including the big one in New York City. It was a huge deal. Mindy said her brother was going to be famous one day. She told Kaley she’d watched it “like a hundred times.” Kept playing it over and over ever since he sent it to her. “It isn’t that scary,” Mindy had said, “so you can watch it.”
Kaley didn’t like scary movies. She didn’t like anything monster-related at all. She wasn’t allowed to watch anything above a PG rating. For Halloween, she’d dressed up as a princess, a clown, a cowgirl and other types of costumes that had nothing to do with monsters or violence.
Mindy sent a copy of the movie to Kaley’s email. As curious as Kaley had been, she hadn’t asked her friend to do that. It sat in cyberspace for a whole day, seeming to bug her like a nagging itch until she finally downloaded it to her tablet. Of course, her parents would never let her watch it, so she said nothing about it to them. The movie wasn’t officially rated, Mindy told her, but Daniel said if it had been rated, it would be rated R. It had some swearing, but not much. The blood factor was minimal, too.
“I don’t want to watch it,” Kaley had said over the phone.
“Don’t be afraid,” Mindy said. “I told you it really wasn’t scary. You’ll love it. It has a teddy bear that talks. All our friends are going to watch it. Don’t be the only one who doesn’t.”
After saying good night to her parents, Kaley pulled out her tablet and watched the movie while under her covers, with the sound low. She figured it would be less scary on such a small screen, if it was even scary at all.
As the movie unfolded, her blinking decreased along with her nerve and ability to breathe. She had become glued to the screen in a petrified and shocked state, unable to shut the video off. The movie hadn’t only been frightening, but downright gross. The kill scenes would remain in her mind forever.
The film started out with a woman—her mother’s age—getting strangled to death by a group of men who had broken into her home. The woman’s daughter, who appeared to be around Kaley’s age, had been hiding under the bed and witnessed the whole thing.
The men were witch hunters and killed the mother because she was a witch.
“The little girl is gone,” one of the men said.
“She must’ve run off,” said another.
“She’s young,” said yet another man. “We’ll find her when the time is right and kill her too.”
After the men left, the little girl hurried over to her mother and tried waking her up. She cried and hugged her, begging for her to get up. When she realized her mother was dead, something in the girl changed. Her tears stopped and her face deadpanned. She stood fast, eyes narrowed, mouth but a thin line, and went over to the closet where she pulled out a large, leather-bound spellbook and a book of matches. She then went to her bedroom and grabbed a teddy bear, Binky Bear, from her bed and headed into the basement. Metal shelving with a variety of forgotten and unused items—paint cans, jars, hedge clippers, toolboxes—stood against the far wall, partially hidden by old bicycles, furniture and other junk. The girl made her way around the obstacles and over to the shelving. She grabbed on to the right side of it and pulled. The shelving swung open like a door, revealing a passageway in the wall.
The little girl entered a room shrouded in darkness except for the minute amount of light coming from the dull basement bulbs. She lit a few candles that were set around the room, using the matches she’d taken from her mom’s bedroom. The place blossomed with flickering light, revealing a small earthen cave complete with a stone fireplace. A large, black cauldron hung within the hearth. Old, slightly warped, wood shelves ran along the walls. Jars of various sizes rested on them. The glass containers were labeled and held such things as frog toes, spider legs, unhatched spider eggs, fish scales, fish tails, rat eyes, rat tails, rat intestines, pigeon eyes, crow eyes, crow beaks and numerous other ingredients.
The girl placed Binky Bear on the floor next to her. She then opened the book and found the spell she wanted, one her mother had taught her, but told her never to use unless she was in mortal danger. She gathered up the ingredients the spell required, then said the magical words as she tossed each component in the cauldron. She added water from a jug that had been sitting on the floor and a vial of fox blood. Next, she held a candle to the wood in the fireplace. Flames bloomed as if the wood had been doused in gasoline—no crumpled newspaper or kindling was needed.
Moments later, the candles flared and black smoke wafted from the cauldron, but in the shape of a serpent seeking out prey. It meandered around the room, flying through the air before it shot into Binky Bear’s single-thread drawn smile. The plushy trembled, then sat up. Its shiny, button eyes turned crimson and claws sprang from its pawless arms. It faced the girl who said, “Kill them all.”
The scene switched to a cut of Binky Bear running along a backcountry road, and then up a driveway and into the woods before a small cabin came into view. It had found the men responsible for its master’s mother’s death. The bear’s eyes narrowed to slits as it marched toward the domicile.
The plushy hopped up onto one of the windowsills and took in the interior of the place. All four men were present, sitting at a round table, playing cards and drinking alcohol. They looked scarier than any monster Kaley could ever imagine. They had scars on their faces and along their arms. One had a shaved head; the rest had long hair that fell past their shoulders. They each had multiple facial piercings—hoops through noses, ears with enough metal in them to build a small car, and eyebrows lined with silver studs. Their skin was decorated with multiple tattoos of snakes, spiders, daggers, guns and ancient-looking symbols. Weapons, including swords, knives and an assortment of firearms, hung on the walls around them.
Satisfied, the bear jumped down, went over to the Jeep parked in the driveway, and set off the alarm by throwing itself into the door.
One of the long-haired men came outside. He held a shotgun in his hands, eyes darting around. He seemed tense at first, then shook his head and lowered the weapon. He killed the alarm using a remote control, then headed to the rear of the vehicle.
Binky Bear rolled out from under the Jeep and sprang to its feet in front of the man. The man shook his head and looke
d confused. That moment of hesitation was the man’s downfall.
Binky sprang into action. He leaped onto the man’s face and sank his claws into the sides of his head. The man screamed, but it was a muffled scream—Binky’s soft, rotund belly pressed against his face like a pillow. Blood squirted out of the man’s head in lawn sprinkler-like fashion. His body jerked and he collapsed to the ground, legs in spasm.
Binky hopped off the dead man, his claws and arms drenched in crimson. The bear grinned, his red eyes glowing brighter as his eyebrows lowered.
From there, the living plushy headed over to the front door and waited off to the side. A moment later, two men exited the cabin, one holding a sword, the other a rifle. One of them asked, “Where you at, you drunk bastard?” and Binky swiped at his left ankle, severing his Achilles tendon. The man screamed like a frightened child and went down fast. The rifle he’d been holding went off and the man’s head next to him exploded. The scene reminded Kaley of the time she’d watched videos of kids blowing up watermelons with M80 firecrackers.
The man with the severed Achilles tendon had lost his gun and was crawling to it. The man looked back and saw Binky coming toward him. His eyes went wide with terror and he crawled faster. Binky grinned, clanked his claws together and dove, landing between the man’s shoulder blades.
A fourth man emerged from the cabin. He was the bald-headed one and the largest of all four witch hunters. He wielded a double-sided axe, his arms bulging with muscles. His mouth dropped open at the sight of the carnage, but his shocked expression turned angry at the sight of the killer bear as it tore the back of his companion’s head clean off with a single swipe of its claws.
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