The X-Files: Goblins

NINE

They walked east along Main Street, Mulder on the outside. The deserted moment had passed, and shoppers, not many, drifted in and out of stores, while automobiles and pickups made their way between the traffic lights. Few bothered to look at him and Scully, and those who did smiled faintly and moved on.

A breeze drifted down the sidewalk, picking up strength, flapping his open topcoat against his legs, slipping an unpleasant chill inside his suit. Scully followed the meandering progress of a mongrel along the curb. “Did you notice how he changed? Hawks, I mean?”

He nodded. “Cop for us, hick for Licia. The man’s no dope. I’m actually a little surprised he didn’t ask for help right away. As far as I can tell, when they need a detective, he’s it. And what’s with Andrews, anyway?”

She shrugged. “First case jitters?”

He supposed it could be, but he didn’t like it. Like the assignment of this case, it just didn’t feel right. He didn’t doubt she was competent; she wouldn’t have gotten this far otherwise. Something, however, would have to be done about that superior attitude she had taken in the station. Behavior like that would shut Hawks up faster than a judge’s order.

As Barney’s slipped by them on the far side, he glanced over and saw, as before, nothing special. A tired bar in a tired town. Pick it up and put it down in Michigan or Oregon, it wouldn’t change. And immediately he thought it, he realized he had probably made a big mistake, letting her go with Webber. The man had a knack for getting people to talk to him. That face, that grin, that shock of red hair was disarming. He hoped it would be enough to offset Licia Andrews.

The morning light dimmed.

The scent of rain grew stronger.

From the corner of his vision he watched Scully tracing the probable path Grady Pierce had taken, leaving the bar, making his way at some point across the street, maybe weaving, maybe not. An empty street. Light rain.

“He didn’t see anybody,” he said as they approached the alley. It was set between a pair of three-story brick buildings, clothing stores on the ground floor in both, what looked to be apartments above.

Scully didn’t question him. “Or he didn’t notice.”

“That late, in this town? On a Saturday night? It may not be very healthy, but it isn’t dead yet. He would have noticed. Especially if it was raining.”

Again Scully didn’t argue. She only said, “Unless he knew him.”

A sideways glance: “Sexist comment, Scully. I am offended.”

“Impersonal pronoun, Mulder. I am unbiased. So far.”

Just as they reached their destination, a gleaming white patrol car pulled in at the curb, facing in the wrong direction. Chief Hawks slid out, jacket and tie in place, hair barely touched by the breeze now a wind. As he came around the trunk, he was greeted by several pedestrians, and he responded in kind, calling each by name. He slipped a hand into a pocket as he joined them, pushing the suit jacket behind his arm.

Mulder saw the shoulder holster.

The chief shivered, rolling his shoulders against the damp. “Are you sure about this?”

“I know it’s old,” Mulder answered, “but it’s always better than reading about it in a report.”

“Visualization,” Scully added.

Hawks nodded understanding. “So…?”

The alley was a few inches wider than six feet, extending another twenty yards to a twelve-foot-high, weather-stained stockade fence. Although there were no garbage cans or a Dumpster, there were small fluttering islands of wind-deposited trash against the base of the walls. There were no windows. There were no fire escapes. The yellow crime scene ribbon had long since been taken down.

They stood on the sidewalk, forcing what foot traffic there was to walk behind them.

The stores on either side had sale signs in their windows, but the one on the right was dark, nothing on display. Above, the windows were all curtained or blind with shades.

Somebody died here, Mulder thought; some poor guy bled to death here.

It was time to walk the crooked path.

Hawks pointed: “Grady was found there, a couple of feet in, sitting against the wall. Even with the rain, it looked like he took a shower in his own blood.”

Mulder took a single step in and hunkered down, looking at the spot, looking over and up at the wall. He saw no evidence of the dying, but he could sense it here just the same.

Scully stood behind him. “He was killed where?”

Hawks walked around them and stood about a yard from Mulder. “The way the blood trail was — and again, remember it was raining — it looked like he was cut here, took a step or two, maybe trying to get to the street, and ended up there, where Agent Mulder is.” He moved aside when Scully took his place. “The thing is, those streetlights don’t reach in very far. A couple of feet at most, and I’ll bet he wasn’t seeing all that clearly.”

“Mulder?”

He rose slowly, watching her turn until her back was against the right-hand wall.

“The killer was standing about here.”

Hawks frowned. “How do you know that?”

“The autopsy report,” she said, gaze constantly shifting, examining the ground, the opposite wall, the ground again. “If your Doc Junis is right, he’d have to be. Can I borrow your pen?”

The chief, looking for and not getting a reaction from Mulder, handed her a ballpoint, which she held in her right hand as if it were a knife, not for stabbing but for cutting.

“The photographs weren’t all that clear,” she continued, almost as though she were talking to herself. “But look…” She gestured until Hawks stood with his back to the street, then stood in front of him and, before he could move, whipped the pen through the air at his throat.

He jumped.

Her apology was a sardonic smile. “No blood on the walls. It was a single slash, very strong, cutting jugular and carotid. There wouldn’t have been a gusher, so to speak, but some significant blood would have hit the walls if he’d been facing in or out.” She handed the pen back. “There was none.” She pointed in. “And there wasn’t any back there, either.”

“Rain,” the chief reminded her. “And it was at least an hour before he was found.”

She nodded. “But the trail, even after all that time, seemed pretty clear, at least from the pictures.” She looked up, squinting, using her chin to show the chief the opposing roofs’ slight overhang, bulging with sagging copper gutters; it may have been raining, but only a downpour and strong wind would have made the alley as soaked as the street. Then she looked at Mulder. “He was facing the wall.”

And that, Mulder knew, was a hell of a thing.

If Scully was right, Grady Pierce would have had to have been damn near blind not to see his attacker.

Unless the attacker was invisible.

“No,” she said to the look on his face. “There’s another explanation, Mulder.”

He didn’t respond. He walked carefully, slowly, to the back and poked a finger at the fence. The wood was spongy with rot, and there were no marks on or in it to indicate anyone had climbed over. Or had tried to.

So the killer had left the way he had come in.

“Pierce must have known him,” Scully said as he rejoined them.

Hawks agreed. “The way it looks, there’s no other reasonable explanation.” He sniffed, laughed, hitched at his belt. “Unless you believe Elly.”

“The witness,” Mulder said.

“If you want to call her that. I wouldn’t bet my life on it, though.” He led them back to the sidewalk. “See, Elly is what we call in our small town, scientific jargon, a fruitcake.” He laughed again, shaking his head. “She’s a dear, Elly Lang is, but she has this theory.”

“Which is?”

“Oh, no. I’m not going to spoil it. This is something you have to hear firsthand.”

The first floor apartment was nearly as dark as the approaching storm.

A single lamp with a saffron chimney on a tilted end table lit only that part of the love seat where Elly Lang sat. Hawks stood in the living room entrance, his back to the tiny foyer; he leaned casually against the wall, hands loose in his pockets. Scully sat in a Queen Ann wingback that smelled of must and mildew. Mulder was on a padded footstool, leaning forward, hands clasped on his knees.

A small room, a Pullman kitchenette at the end of a short hall, a bathroom, a bedroom barely large enough for the single bed and a dresser missing two of its five drawers. Framed prints on the papered walls; a false fireplace with no logs; a jumbled collection of plastic and ceramic horses on the mantel; a fringed carpet worn through in places, only the ghosts of its original colors left behind. The bay window was covered with yellowed flocked curtains tattered along the edges and at the bottom. No television; only a small, portable clock radio on the end table beneath the lamp.

Elly Lang wore discolored, thick-soled nurse’s shoes, argyle socks rolled down to mid-shin, and a simple brown dress without a belt or trim. There was no telling how old she was. In the lamplight she could have been ancient — no lower teeth, collapsed cheeks, strings of dirty white hair untrapped by a hair net. No makeup at all. She kept her hands primly folded in her lap, no rings or watch.

But Mulder watched her eyes. They weren’t old at all, and of an odd pale grey that made them appear almost transparent.

“Goblin,” she said with a sharp nod, and a don’t you dare contradict me glare at the chief.

Mulder nodded. “Okay.”

She closed one eye partway as she regarded him suspiciously. “I said goblin.”

He nodded again. “Okay.”

“They live in the woods, you know.” Her voice was low, harsh, the rasp of a childhood Halloween witch. “Came when the army did, back in '16, '17, I don’t remember, just before I was born.” She straightened her spine, and she faded, leaving only the shine of her eyes, the bloodless line of her lips. “Things happen sometimes, and they don’t like it.”

“What things?” he asked patiently.

“I wouldn’t know. I ain’t a goblin.”

He smiled, just barely, and just barely, she smiled back.

“Miss Lang—”

“Ms.,” she instructed. “I ain’t blind. I read the papers.”

“I’m sorry. Ms. Lang. What my partner and I need to know is what you saw that night. The night Grady Pierce died.”

“Profanity,” she answered without hesitation.

He waited, head tilted, watching her eyes, watching her lips.

“A profane man was Grady Pierce. Every other word out of his mouth a profanity Especially when he was drinking. Which”—her lips pursed in disapproval—“he was most of the time. Always going on about his ghosts, his stupid ghosts. Like he was the only one in the world who saw them.” A slow disapproving shake of her head. “He never listened to me, you know. I told him once, I told him a hundred times to stay home when the goblins were out, but he never listened. Never.”

Quietly, respectfully: “You were out?”

“Of course. My obligations, you know.”

Mulder questioned her with a look.

“I mark them,” she explained. “The goblins. When I see them, I mark them, so this so-called policeman can lock them away until they burn up in the sun. But he never does, you know.” The head turned, and Mulder sensed another glare. “He could have saved that old coot’s life if he had picked up the marked ones.”

“I have a feeling that will change, Ms. Lang,” Scully said.

“Damn right it will,” the old woman snapped.

“What you saw,” Mulder prompted softly.

She shifted, pushing back into the love seat. Her fingers began an endless weaving.

“I was heading home.”

“From?”

“The Company G.”

Mulder kept his expression neutral. “And that’s… a bar?”

“A cocktail lounge and restaurant, young man, use the brains God gave you. I do not go to bars. Never have, never will.”

“Sorry. Of course.”

“It’s east of that hideous place Grady always went to, whores and old men, that’s all that’s there. Around the corner, on Marchant Street. A very nice establishment.” The lips smiled. “I know the owner personally.”

He heard the chief shift impatiently, heard a faint rustle as Scully shifted in her chair.

Elly cleared her throat to recapture his attention. “I saw Grady up ahead, going into that alley between McConnell’s and The Orion Shop. The Orion Shop is closed, you know. They cheated on your change. And the clothes they sold weren’t fit for a cow. The goblins drove them away. They do that sometimes, drive the robbers away.”

The fingers weaving.

The patter of light rain against the windows.

“I didn’t care, of course. About Grady, I mean. He called me names all the time, drunk and sober, so I didn’t care at all when he went into the alley. I kept on walking, didn’t dare stop, it isn’t safe for a woman on the streets at night these days, you know.” She looked over to Scully, who nodded her agreement. “I heard a voice.”

“From across the street?”

“He was yelling, young man. Grady Pierce always yelled. The army did that to him, made him deaf, I think, so he was always yelling even when he wasn’t, if you know what I mean.”

Mulder looked at the carpet. “Did you hear what he said?”

She sniffed. “I don’t pay attention to things that don’t concern me. He was yelling, that’s all. I just kept walking.”

Fingers weaving, then abruptly still.

He watched her left heel rise and fall, silently tapping.

“I looked over. Natural curiosity, to see what a drunk was yelling at in an alley.”

He watched her hands clasp, in a grip so tight he thought the bones might snap. He wanted to cover them, calm them, but he didn’t dare move.

“I couldn’t see him, except one leg kind of sticking into the light. I saw the goblin, though.”

“You did.”

The heel stopped; the fingers unwound.

“You don’t have to humor me, Mr. Mulder. I don’t like being humored. The goblin stepped out of the wall, kicked that old man’s leg, and ran up the street.”

“Did you call the police?”

She snorted. “Of course not. I knew what they would say. Don’t need to be locked up again, not at my age. I’m going to die right here in this house, not in any damn cell.”

He gave her that smile again. “But you did call later, didn’t you?”

She leaned farther back, all her face now in shadow. “Yes. Yes, I did. Damn conscience wouldn’t leave me be until I did, even though I knew they wouldn’t do anything about the goblin.”

“Ms. Lang?” It was Scully.

Mulder sat up carefully.

“Ms. Lang, what did the goblin look like?”

“It was black, child,” Elly said.

“You mean—”

“No, not a Negro, that’s not what I mean. I mean just what I said. It was black. All black. It had no color at all.”

They stood on the sidewalk outside the building. A handful of children played noisy baseball in a small park diagonally across the street. The brief rain had stopped, leaving behind the clouds, and the smell of wet tarmac.

Hawks seemed embarrassed. “She drinks,” he said quietly. “Like a fish. That’s all she does when she’s not marking her goblins.” The laugh he uttered was partly embarrassment, partly mirth. “Orange spray paint, if you can believe it. Most of the time she sits over there in the park, watches the kids play ball. That bench there on the grass by the third base line, that’s hers. But every so often she goes off on a tear, I have no idea what triggers it. She starts walking around town, zapping people with orange spray paint. Then she comes to the station and tells me to lock the goblins up.”

He waited until they were in the patrol car before he jammed a toothpick into his mouth and pulled away from the curb. “Just about everyone knows her, see, so we don’t arrest her or anything. We pay for the clothes or whatever she wrecks, and that’s usually the end of it. No real harm done.” He grinned around the toothpick. “What you might call local color.”

“So you don’t think she saw anything?” Mulder asked from the back seat.

“I wish I knew, I really do. We looked, of course, but we didn’t find a thing. Myself, I think she saw shadows, that’s all. It was raining, there was wind… that’s all.”

No one spoke as he headed back to the station. “But what,” Scully asked, “if she did see something?”

The toothpick flipped from one corner of his mouth to the other. “A black goblin, Agent Scully? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Like I said, she was drunk, like always, and it was shadows.”

Maybe, Mulder thought; but wherever there’s a shadow, there’s always something to make it.

Then Scully said, “Is she the only one, Chief?”

Mulder saw him twitch.

“Only one what?”

“Is she the only one who’s seen the goblin?”

They passed another small park where a pickup baseball game had drawn a small crowd.

“No,” he admitted quietly. “No, damnit, there’ve been others.”