01 - Goblins by Charles Grant - (ebook by Undead) Page B

way.
    Guilt, for the Project, was too damn expensive.
    “When do I get to see the results?” It wasn’t a plea, it was barely a
question.
    “Later,” he promised. Below the level of the window, he crossed his fingers.
Just in case.
    “I feel pretty good.”
    “You’re looking good.”
    He returned the smile.
    “I’ve almost got it, too.”
    Tymons nodded. He heard that every week, every month. “You’d better. They’re
…” He couldn’t help a grin. “They’re a little annoyed.”
    “It wasn’t my fault. You’re the doctor.”
    He had heard that one, too. Every week. Every month.
    “But I’ll take care of it.”
    Tymons glared and pointed. “You’ll do no such thing, you understand? You let
me handle everything.”
    The face didn’t change expression, but Tymons looked away from the contempt.
    “I’d like my books back, please.”
    He shook his head. “That didn’t work, and you know it. The books, the music,
the TV. Too many distractions. You need to concentrate on your concentration.”
He chuckled. “As it were.”
    “I can concentrate, damnit. I concentrate so much my brain is falling
out.”
    Tymons nodded sympathetically. “I know, I know, and I’ll talk to you about it
later. Right now I have work to do.”
    Even through the distortion, the sarcasm was clear: “Another little
adjustment?”
    Tymons didn’t answer. He switched off the communication unit, waved vaguely,
and hurried to his office. Once inside, he locked the door behind him and
dropped behind his desk, switched on his computer, leaned back and closed his
eyes.
    This was wrong.
    Things weren’t getting better, and no goddamn adjustments were ever going to
work.
    He sighed and checked his watch—he had almost two hours before Rosemary
arrived. Plenty of time to complete copying his files. Plenty of time to take
the Army-issue .45 Tonero had given him and go back next door. And use it.
    Plenty of time to vanish.
    After all, he thought with a hollow laugh, he was the expert at things like
that.
    Then he glanced through The Blue Boy, and started.
    The room was empty.
    “Damn.” He flicked a switch beneath the shelf, activating the lights embedded
in the room’s ceiling. All color vanished, all shadows.
    Still empty.
    The bastard had already left.
    Like a ghost, he thought, glancing nervously at the door; the damn thing
moves like a ghost.
    After all this time, he couldn’t bring himself to think of it as human.

 
 
ELEVEN
     
     
    The overcast thickened, splotches of shifting cloud from grey to black
bulging and spreading, using the wind to warn that the rain that had fallen
before would be nothing like the rain to come.
    Dana stood uneasily in the middle of a narrow paved road, not at all caring
for the way the woodland pressed around her, not liking the faint hint of ozone
that promised lightning when the storm broke again.
    They had eaten in the diner as planned, but neither she nor Mulder had been
either surprised or pleased with what they had heard: Webber and Andrews had
learned nothing that hadn’t been recorded or implied in the reports already. No one had seen anything, no one had heard anything; many of the shopkeepers
knew Grady, most of them not kindly; a couple recognized Ulman’s picture, but
there was nothing more than that. He was from the post. Big deal.
    No miracles.
    No one had mentioned goblins, either.
    Hawks had explained that, over the past couple of months, some kids and a
couple of adults had reported seeing… something drifting around the town.
They called it a goblin because everyone knew of Elly Lang’s obsession.
    “But it doesn’t mean anything,” he had insisted calmly. “A story like that,
it kind of feeds on itself.”
    By two, the afternoon light had worsened, shifting closer to false twilight.
Mulder decided to check the site of the corporal’s murder before the storm
broke. Andrews, on a hunch, volunteered to return to the motel to interview the
owner; it was