Hobgoblins

(This story is best viewed in a maximized window so the spacing doesn't look all wonky.  I like my double-spacing for stories and HTML does not like to co-operate!)



                   “Todd? You asleep?”  He didn’t open his eyes.  Slumped against the window with his headphones on,

he was just a shoulder, just black cloth, just a tangle of hair.  He probably hadn’t washed in days.

                    “Todd?”

                   In the white glare of oncoming headlights, his face seemed paler than she remembered, leaner, but it

was the same old clothes and cigarette smell.  After seven years of running, stalling, standing still, all he got was

thinner.

                   Diane took a hand from the wheel and nudged him.

                    “Wake up.  We’re almost there.”

                   He sat up and tugged the headphones down, cusing softly and squinting at the dark woods outside.  It

was still raining and fog drifted in the low places, but the roads were familiar now.  The signposts and trees were

shadows from long-ago bike rides, caught for an instant in the headlights like photographs, then gone again.  Todd

sat back and pressed his eyes closed.

                    “Hey,” she said, “remember when the creek flooded and we made those fishing poles?”  That was the

first summer they stayed here, when Todd was twelve and she was nine, before they were told about the accident. 

They spent two months wandering the fields and playing in the streams, conspiring to stay and never dreaming

they’d have to.

                    “No,” he said.  He turned on the radio and swore at the static, punched the scan a few times, turned it

off.  He pulled the headphones back up.

                   Had he forgotten all of it, the four vicious years he spent here?  He stayed just long enough to get the

shadow of a beard, and then he was gone.  After that, it was seven years of Christmases waiting, of unreturned

letters and dead-end phone calls, of looking for him everywhere.  Seven years, and the only way she could bring

him home was another funeral.

                   They came to the turn and she brought them down the long driveway, a tunnel of branches and gravel

winding to the old house.  It was strange to see it dark, as if she’d thought somehow Grandpa would still be there

with the porch light on, waiting.  He’d always kept it on for Todd.

                   Out of the car the wind was cold, and late autumn rain hissed on the remnants of the leaves.  Todd

pulled his hood up and stuck his hands in his pockets.

                    “Couldn’t we have stopped or something?  Like a motel?”

                    “I just wanted to get here, okay?”  She popped the trunk and walked back to him.

                    “Yeah, well, I’m gonna stay in the car.”  He looked down and for a moment his eyes were empty. 

Whatever fury drove him out at sixteen had since dripped out of him, and now he didn’t even look at her.

                    “No, come on, let’s go in.”

                    “I’m okay out here, all right?”

                   Sleeping in the car was nothing new for him.  In the city she’d leave campus to walk down near the

bars and closed-up arcades, scanning for his car.  If she didn’t find it, he could have been anywhere, and

sometimes months passed without word.  Grandpa called and always asked, “have you seen him?  Do you know

where he is?”  She almost never did.

                   “You have to come in,” she said.  “I’m not going in there by myself.”

                    “Christ, you’re like what, twenty?”  He opened the back door of the car.  “You still afraid of the fairies?”

                    “Cut it out.”

                    “The old man finally talk you crazy?  You didn’t believe all that stuff, did you?”

                    “Shut up,” she said.  “Don’t be a jerk, okay?  I just don’t want to be alone right now.  And, you know,

after all this time the least you could do is come inside.”

                    “What good does that do?”  He sat on the edge of the back seat and looked into the trees.  “He’s

gone.”

                    “Yeah, well, I guess it doesn’t.”  She felt her throat tighten.  “Not any more.”

                    “What the hell do you want from me?”  He got up and slammed the door.  Pushing past her, he

grabbed his things from the trunk, just a wad of torn jeans and t-shirts tangled up in a paper bag.

                    “You’re so fucking selfish!”  Yelling at Todd was pointless, she knew that, but now she was shaking

and it didn’t matter.  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

                   He stood there and just stared through her.  She wanted to shake him, hit him, just choke him until

something fell out.

                    “I mean, Jesus, Todd, do you even care about anything?”

                    “No.  No, okay?”  His voice was low and flat under the sound of the rain.  “Leave me alone.”

                   He turned away and that was it.  He’d walk away like there was nothing to say, like they were

strangers and he’d never pulled her by the hand through the park or put a band-aid on her knee.  Just like that, he’d

shrug it off.

                    “Todd, wait!”

                   Of course he wouldn’t wait, but this time her head was pounding and the empty house stared down

with accusing eyes.  This time she wouldn’t just stand there while he ran away, not again.  Not now.

                   She lunged forward and grabbed him, yanked him back.  They yelled clouds in the cold air and slid,

pulling with fingernails and jacket sleeves, heels digging in.

                   And then it fell.  The bag ripped open and everything spilled out, every sorry rag and cigarette box, and

something hard and heavy that hit the gravel between them.  She stopped and stared at it, feeling him slide out of

her hands.

                   A gun.  He had a gun.  She looked up and saw his eyes colorless in the dark, his face blank.  He

picked it up.

                    “Just leave me alone,” he said, and walked away.

                   She watched him go but couldn’t move, just stood there in the muddy tangle of his clothes.  He had a

gun.  For a crazy moment, she thought of secret enemies and threatening men, drugs and cash, Todd in deep with

something sinister, but no.  That wasn’t Todd.  Todd was sudden screaming and long silences, mild dark eyes and

his soft, collapsing face.  The gun had to be for him.

                   A gentle nausea slid through her as she bent to pick up the clothes.  It couldn’t really have come to

that, not that, not Todd.  He used to laugh out loud at cartoons and put fake spiders in her hair.  He loved jazz and

martini olives.  Girls loves him.  He had friends in the city, and didn’t she give him money, cigarettes, he phone

number?  But he had a gun.

                   She closed the trunk and started toward the house with slow steps, looking up at the dark windows. 

Once, she would stand on the balcony and look at the stars, Grandpa making popcorn in the kitchen and Todd on

his belly by the fire.  In the spring, they let their rabbits free, playing frisbee in the cold wind while the dog slept on

the porch.

                   In those days, Todd was explosive.  Every word in Grandpa’s mouth was a detonator, and there were

afternoons of slammed doors and bitter accusations.  He hid in the cellar and brooded, or took long walks back

toward town.  The porch railing had hatchet scars from the summer he was fifteen.

                   She went inside and turned on the lights.  Every photograph, every quilt was still just so, as if Grandpa

had only stepped out for the afternoon and soon he’d be home to wrap her in his wool and woodsmoke arms, tell

her it would be all right.  She had last semester’s grades and his favorite licorice in her purse, and now it seemed

impossibly stupid.

                   She sat down by the cold hearth and listened.  The only sound was wind and rain, no sound of Todd. 

On nights like this, Grandpa used to say the hobgoblins were out to dance on the roof.  He’d smile sideways at her

and whisper the names of the ones he knew, counting them off on his rough fingers.  For every little thing, he had a

story like that.

                   Each summer he cut roses to put by the stream for the sylphs, and every night filled a porcelain dish

with milk for the cellar brownies.  Todd swore at him and called him crazy, threw rocks in the stream and smashed

the dish.  Grandpa only shook his head and picked up the pieces.

                    “He’s a sensitive boy,” he said. “Everything touches him deeply.”  She sat with him all that night,

helping him glue each shard back in place.

                   Grandpa believed in wicked spirits, too, the kind that crawled inside your skin and sucked on your

heart, gnawed at you until nothing good was left.  Letting them get you was easy, he said, but getting rid of them

was hard.  Todd believed nothing, but he changed before her eyes.  The boy who loved salamanders and hayrides,

with his shy smile and wavy hair, dried up and disappeared, overtaken by a stranger with dark circles under his

eyes.

                   She stood up and went to the kitchen, took the old dish from the cabinet shelf and ran her fingers over

the cracks.  Every night while Todd lit the fire, Grandpa poured a little milk in the bottom of the dish and, winking at

her, went down the basement stairs without a sound.  In the morning, the dish was always empty and clean.  Todd,

of course, said it was rats.

                   A floorboard creaked somewhere and she stopped.  Had he come inside?  She closed her eyes and

listened, but it was so quiet even the ticking of the clock seemed loud.  He wouldn’t use it tonight, she told herself,

not here with her.  Even he couldn’t be that selfish.

                   She held her breath for another minute, but heard nothing.  He had to be in the house, though.  He

would have come in from the rain by now.

                   She took a deep breath and set the dish on the table.  After Todd left for good to the city, she and

Grandpa sat here every night to read the news.  Never saying so, they looked for him on every page, for his face

caught unawares at the edge of a photograph, his name in a police blotter, a message hidden in the ads. 

Whenever the phone rang, it might have been Todd.

                   Going to college was her chance.  If she could find him, talk to him, bring him back home, something

could change.  She waited and planned for the day she’d find him, but it happened one day by chance.  Glancing

up from the street, she caught him at a bus stop, leaning out of the snow, strung out or exhausted or both.  He

blinked at her in mute surprise and asked her for a smoke.

                   But he wouldn’t come home.  Every time she found him, she lost him again.  The city kept swallowing

him whole, and every time she saw him, something else seemed missing.

                    “It’s the hobgoblin,” Grandpa said, “sitting inside him.  He’s too afraid to force it out, too afraid to let

anyone else in.”  He said such things aren’t that rare.  Tragedy lets them in, and people don’t know it until it’s too

far gone.

                   And now Todd had a gun.  He wouldn’t use it tonight, not tonight, but after the funeral he might do

anything. She could take it while he slept, talk to him later, tell him- Tell him what?  There was nothing she could

say he wouldn’t ignore, hadn’t been ignoring for years.  She couldn’t even get him home until it was too late.

                   She swallowed back tears and ran her finger over the scalloped edge of the dish.  Grandpa had been

gone for more than a week, and the brownies were probably hungry.  The thought was ridiculous, but it was

something, at least, she could do.  Like a tribute, she thought, and took the bottle of milk from the fridge.  He would

have wanted this done.

                   Carefully she took the dish of milk and walked as he had, slow steps without a sound to open the

cellar door.  But it was already open.  If it was open, it had to be Todd.  Grandpa never left it like that, and they

used to fight about it all the time when Todd was here.

                   She turned around.  If he was there, the brownies could wait.  He was sitting down there with the gun,

and whatever he was thinking, she had no answers for it.

                   She leaned against the wall and just tried to breathe.  If he really wanted to, well, she couldn’t stop

him.  And then what?  They’d all be in the ground together, all but her, and there’d be no more chasing him, no

more begging and yelling, no more explaining.  Just like that, it would all be over, and every year she’d put flowers

on their graves.

                   He wouldn’t hurt anymore.

                   She could go on with things, breathe again, let it go.  She could stop staring at every huddled coat on

the street and trolling through parking lots at odd hours. He’d never call again at 4am, slurring with liquor and cold. 

He’d be done running and crashing and falling.  He could rest.

                   She swallowed hard and felt the dish trembling in her hands.  Todd would never smile again, never

laugh again, never fall in love.  He’d never sing out loud with his headphones on, or walk down by the river in the

snow.  No one would remember the house, the stream, the fairies.

                   How could she tell a photograph she was sorry, or tell a grave stone that she tried?

                   Slowly, she turned back to the door.

                   With the dish in one hand, she lit the waiting candle and picked it up.  Every step she took one by

one, breathing slowly the damp cellar smell of earth and rust.  A strange draft came from somewhere, cold and

gusting, pulling at the flame.

                   Below, the silence was deeper.  The trembling of the golden light reached down, brushing the edges of

the room.  At the bottom, the light bread out across the packed dirt floor, and there in the edge of it was Todd.

                   She stopped.  He sat very still with his back to her, surrounded by the strange, moving shadows of the

cobwebs.

                    “Diane?” he whispered.

                    “It’s me,” she said.

                   Setting the candle and dish by the stairs, she came to his side and knelt.  His face was in his hands

and the gun was in his lap, gleaming black and heavy in the dim light.  He didn’t look up.  There had to be

something, some right thing she could say, some perfect thing that would reach him even now, but she sat inches

from him and words wouldn’t come.

                   Slowly, she touched his shoulder, feeling his bones as if they were bare.

                   The cold wind fought with the candle flame, pulsing from the open window in wet gusts.  The light

flashed brighter, stammered, and died.  She clutched his shoulder in the sudden dark, imagining soft noises in the

corners of the room.

                   They didn’t move.  For a long time, she just held on and listened to him breathe.  She closed her eyes

against the dark, tasting the damp chill and listening to the trees moan.  This would have frightened him once, this

darkness wrapping close, like the shadows expanding in their bedroom when they were small.  Now he came here

and sank into it, let it wash over him and never stirred.

                   There was a lullaby for the dark, she remembered, a sweet old song their mother sang when the moon

wasn’t out and the black mouth of the closet yawned wide.  She’d sat between their beds and gave a hand to each,

stroking their hair as she sang.  Diane could almost hear it, blowing through the room on the autumn night wind. 

Todd would remember it, too.

                   Quietly, she started to sing.  At first she could only breathe it, hesitating over the words, the faded

sound, but then something in her chest let go, untwisted and spilled up through her voice.  The song flowed out like

water, warm as blood, and filled the air around them.  When she felt him shaking, she held him in her arms.

                   For a long time she held him, poured the old words out, breathed with the dark.  Even the wind stilled

as she let the song fade, felt his face buried in her shoulder.

                    “I miss them,” he said.  She heard the cracks in his voice.

                    “I know.”  She held him tighter.  “God, I know.”

                    “I’m sorry,” he said.

                    “Me, too.”  She brushed her fingers through his hair.  “Please, come up.”

                   She took his hand and they stood, leaving the gun behind on the cold ground.  By touch she found the

candle and the dish, then led him up.

                   In the electric glare of the hallway, his face was stark and smudged with dust, but his eyes were green

and clear.  She set the candle on the ground and looked up at him, feeling the tears drying in tight lines on her

cheeks.  He turned toward the rest of the house and took a deep breath.

                   She looked down.  The cracked and mended dish was in her hands, clean and dry as when she’d first

picked it up.

                    “Diane? What is it?”

                   She shook her head.  There was no need to ask and no reason to tell him.  This was enough.

                   “Come on, Diane.  Let’s go sit.”

                   She nodded and took his hand, and Todd went to light the hearth.


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