01 - Goblins (3 page)

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.

Mulder freely admitted to anyone who asked that his office, such as it was,
seldom complied, strictly or otherwise, with regulations. While he knew where
everything was, usually, it wasn’t always where Bureau Section Heads decreed it
ought to be. Controlled tornado was how one of his friends had put it; a hell of
a mess was how he described it. Usually with a shrug. Always without apology.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that it was in the basement of the J. Edgar
Hoover Building, it served its purpose; and the fact that he still had it after
all the waves he had made over previous X-File cases was, to more than a few, a
minor miracle.

He sat there now, chair tilted back as he wadded up blank sheets of paper and tossed them toward a metal wastebasket
set in front of a pair of brown metal file cabinets. “Toward” was the right
word. “Into” would have been nicer, but that rarely happened.

Like visiting with Jefferson, it helped him think.

Today, it also helped him kill time while waiting to be summoned to his
appointment with his new immediate superior, Arlen Douglas. The word on the
floor was, the man, even though he was only in the slot temporarily, wasn’t
pleased with the success rate of his agents, and he was hunting for scalps.

Which was why the floor in front of his filing cabinets looked like a
snowfield when Carl Barelli walked in, visitor’s pass clipped to his sports
jacket’s breast pocket.

Mulder tossed, missed, swiveled his chair around and said, “Michael Jordan is
safe for another season.”

“Jordan retired last year.”

Mulder rolled his eyes. “That’s the trouble with you, Carl. You pay too much
attention to details. It’s the big picture you have to consider.”

To his surprise, his old friend didn’t respond. Instead, he wandered around
the room, fingers drifting but touching nothing, glancing at without really
seeing the charts and Most Wanted sheets, the notes and NASA posters taped and
tacked to the wall.

He was a swarthy man with thick black hair and a classic Italian profile
dented and scarred just enough to prevent him from being pretty. He was also a
former semi-pro footballer who had all the heart and few of the major skills to
make it in the NFL or Canada. Luckily, he had recognized the shortcomings before
it was too late; now he wrote about the sport for the revitalized
New Jersey
Chronicle,
and once every six weeks or so came down to Washington to check
out the Redskins, or to see what Congress was up to with a recent flurry of
sports safety legislation. While he was here, he always dropped in, looking for
a free meal, or a long night of pub-crawling.