The X-Files: Goblins

THREE

Corporal Frank Ulman was tired of lying in bed. His back was sore, his ass was sore, his legs were sore. The only thing that wasn’t sore was his head, and he figured that would fall off if he had to count the holes in the ceiling one more time.

It was, no question about it, a lousy way to spend a Saturday night.

What made it worse was the fact that he was here because he had been stupid. Really stupid. All he had wanted last night was a quiet drink, pick up someone for the evening because his regular girl had to work, and wake up the next day without a hangover. No big deal. So he had wrangled a pass from the sarge, no sweat, put on his civies, and hitched a ride into Marville with a couple of half-bald Warrant Officers who spent the whole time bitching about the way the DoD couldn’t make up its mind whether to close Dix down or not.

They had dropped him off at Barney’s Tavern.

He went in and had his drink, passed a few words with the muscle-bound bartender, watched a couple of innings of Phillies baseball on the TV, and listened while the curiously noisy crowd gabbed about old Grady getting his throat slashed the weekend before.

It was a shame. He had kind of liked the old fart, had bought him a drink now and then, and enjoyed listening to his stories. Grady had called him “Sal,” because, he said, Frankie looked like some old actor or something named Sal Mineo. After the first couple of times, Frankie hadn’t bothered to correct him. If the old guy thought he looked like a movie star, it was no skin off his nose.

Now that Grady was dead, so was Sal.

Too bad.

Another drink, another inning, and he made his first mistake: He tried to pick up a woman sitting by herself at a table near the back. Not bad looking in the tavern’s twilight, but he wasn’t about to be fussy. Angie wasn’t here, and he was. Just like always. It was a mistake because the bitch didn’t want to be picked up, said so loudly when he persisted, and finally suggested that he perform a certain number of mind-boggling, and definitely unnatural, sexual acts upon himself on his way home to his momma.

His second mistake was dropping a twenty on the table in front of her and telling her to either put up or shut up, and don’t forget the change.

His third mistake was not listening to that muscle-bound bartender, who told him to get his sorry ass out of his bar before the roof fell in.

Corporal Ulman, with too many boilermakers and a hell of an attitude under his belt, called the bartender a fag.

The next thing he knew he was in Walson, the Air Force hospital on post, getting stitched under the chin, getting a cast on his left arm, and getting a facefull of the sarge, who had been waiting for him when the cops brought him in.

Bed rest was the order, take these pills, stay out of trouble, don’t come back.

All day he stared at the barracks ceiling, his left arm throbbing in a sling, his face a road map of yellow and purple bruises.

Nobody felt sorry for him.

The sarge had told him that when he got up the next day, he was going to be busted. Again.

So he figured he didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to lose when he swung his legs over the side of the bed and waited for the dizziness to pass. He had to get out. Walk around a little. Get some fresh air. Maybe find a card game and tell a few stories of his own. Anything but count those damn holes again.

Clumsily he dressed in boots and fatigues, made it as far as the door before he felt the first ache, deep in his jawbone. It almost sent him back, but now it was a matter of pride. A busted arm, a few bruises, what kind of a soldier would he be if he let something like that keep him on his back?

He checked the second floor corridor and saw no one, heard nothing. Why should he? Everyone else was having a good time, bumping around Marville, Browns Mills, drinking themselves blind, getting laid, catching a flick.

The thought made him angry.

One goddamn lucky punch, one lousy mistake, and here he was, practically a cripple. And he wouldn’t put it past one of the guys to call Angie and tell her everything.

Son of a bitch.

What he needed, he decided then, wasn’t a card game, it was a drink. Something to calm him down, something to ease the pain.

He knew just where to get it.

Five minutes later, after slipping a cheap and slim flashlight into his hip pocket and dry-swallowing one of the pain pills the doc had given him, he was in and out of Howie Jacker’s room, two pints of Southern Comfort tucked into his shirt. The jerk never learned to lock his locker, his loss, Frankie’s gain.

Five minutes after that he was outside. Behind the brick barracks the woods began, and he slipped into them quickly, making his way along a well-worn path toward a clearing half a mile in. He’d been invited there last summer, a place reserved for those who wanted to drink, or whatever, alone, without the hassle of officially leaving the post.

Actually, the clearing was beyond the post’s boundary, which meant that its users were technically AWOL.

Not that anybody cared.

One part of these damn woods was the same as another.

He took the first sip almost before the barracks lights were blocked by the trees, gasping at the hundred-proof sweetness, smacking his lips as the throbbing began to fade. This was a great idea, and beat counting holes all to hell and gone. He took another drink, tucked the pint into the sling, and pulled out the flash. The beam was narrow, but he only needed it to warn him of pine boughs and oak branches. The trail itself had been used so often, it was practically a ditch.

He moved quickly, glancing up now and then in hopes of seeing the stars or the moon. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the woods. Not really. For a city boy, he had learned to take them or leave them.

What he didn’t like was the voice the trees had.

When the breeze blew, there were whispers, like old men talking about him behind their hands; when the air was still, the leaves still moved, nudged by night things who stayed just out of reach of the narrow white beam.

He drank again.

The woods talked to him.

He stopped once and checked behind him, slashing the beam up the trail, seeing nothing but grey trunks and colorless underbrush.

He drank, walked, and cursed when he realized the first pint was already empty. He tossed the bottle aside angrily, took out the second one, and slipped it into the sling. Later; that one was for later.

The breeze kicked into a gust of strong wind, damp and cool.

The branches danced and whispered.

Okay, he thought, so maybe not such a hot idea after all. Maybe he should just go back, lay down, drink himself into a stupor and let the sarge do his worst in the morning.

His head ached, his arm ached, his jaw ached.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

Another gust shoved him off the trail, the beam blurring across the ground, sparkling as it passed through pockets of mist.

Something moved, out there in the dark.

Something large.

Frankie swayed, wishing he hadn’t drunk so much, wishing he hadn’t taken those pills first.

His stomach felt on fire, and sweat had broken out across his brow and down his spine.

It wasn’t warm at all.

The wind had turned cold.

He heard it again, something moving toward him, not bothering to mask its approach.

His first thought was Jersey Devil, and he giggled. Right. A real live monster in the middle of New Jersey. Right. Tell me another.

His stomach lurched.

He swallowed hard and hurried on, swerving around a bush whose thorns clawed at his legs. His broken arm burned now, too, and he cradled it with his free hand, sending the beam sideways, poking at the black without pushing it away.

When he collided with a sapling that threw him to the ground, he cried out, cursed, kicked himself awkwardly to his feet and demanded to know who the hell was out there, he was a sick man, he was lost, goddamnit, and he didn’t need this shit.

The wind tugged at his hair, plucked at his shirt.

A drop of rain splattered on the tip of nose.

“Oh great,” he muttered. “That’s just fucking great.”

Something in the trees overhead.

Something in the dark just behind.

He wiped his face with a forearm, used the flashlight like a lance as he found a clear path and broke into a slow trot. It wasn’t the right trail, but it had to lead somewhere, and right now somewhere other than here was exactly where he wanted to be.

Stupid; he was stupid.

The sarge was going to kill him, Angie was going to kill him, and Howie would definitely kill him when he found his stash gone.

Something behind.

Something above.

Light rain slipped between the leaves, between the branches.

God, he thought, get me outta here.

He swerved easily around a gnarled oak, dodged the grasp of a cage of white birch. He couldn’t hear anything but his own breathing now, and the wind, and the patter of the rain, but he couldn’t stop running. Every step exploded in his arm, but he couldn’t stop running, following the sweep and dart of the beam until he rounded a thicket and the ground was gone.

He yelled as he tumbled into a ditch, screamed when he landed on his arm, and blacked out until the pain brought him back.

Rain on his face, like the touch of spider legs.

He rolled onto his knees and hand, and threw up until his throat burned. Then he rocked back on his heels, amazed that the flashlight was still in his grip. He used it to check the ditch, saw it was barely three feet deep.

And there was a road.

“All right!”

Dizzy, swallowing rapidly, he staggered to his feet and looked back at the woods.

No way. No way. He would hike until someone found him, or he found a way back to the post. If it was an MP patrol, who cared? Anything was better than this. Even the sarge.

He slipped-crawled up the other side and onto the tarmac, took a deep breath, and began walking.

The ditch ended a few yards later, the trees closing in, not even leaving a shoulder.

It didn’t take long before the pain finally reasserted itself and he had to stop, lean against a dead pine whose branches had been stripped off all the way to the top. There were several of them here, and he figured it was lightning, a quick fire; there was a lot of patches like this here in the Barrens.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, move your butt.”

Maybe a drink.

One drink.

The rain was cold and the wind was cold and he was too cold for a spring night like this. He reached into the sling, and laughed when he pulled out the second pint, intact.

He unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle in a toast to the sky.

He drank and licked his lips.

He lowered his head and saw the outline of a covered Jeep not fifty yards ahead, parked on the left.

He grinned, waved the flashlight, and started up the road, every few feet bracing himself against one of the trees. It wasn’t the MPs, thank God. Probably somebody out to get a little with a townie. He laughed. A Jeep, while it was possible, was hardly the best way in the world.

He drank and waved the flashlight again.

The passenger door swung open, and he saw a woman’s face.

“Hey!” he called. Hiccuped. “Give a guy a lift?”

The woman’s face disappeared.

He drank and grinned, stumbled, and reached out to catch himself on a trunk.

The wood was soft.

Too soft.

He yelped and jumped back, the bottle dropping from his hand.

He aimed the flashlight unsteadily, and saw the arm reach out of the bark.

He saw the blade.

He heard himself scream.

But he could only scream once.