Jackson recovered and realized even amongst goblins the proper course of first introductions was to flatter his hostess. “Why you, my beautiful queen!” He bent and swept one arm in respect. While his head remained down he asked loudly, “May I know thy name, my queen? I am Special Agent Jackson…”
“Jackson Rafael Davison, Jr…if I am not mistaken,” She demurred.
Standing straight, he gulped and replied with a more quiet, “Yes.”
She swung her blade loosely down about her as she started stepping about the human in a circle, just inside the ring of thirty or more goblins gnashing teeth, hunched over and making noises as though it were time for supper and Jackson was the main course. She glanced at him occasionally and smirked each time she did.
“You’re wondering how I know?”
For the first time in the night, Agent Davison was disarmed, and not just by a pretty face, but rather that he should be so well known amongst high mountain goblins in the middle of the Rocky Mountain range. He gulped down a hard, dry swallow and nodded. But he kept his eyes tightly fixed upon hers, even while watching for movement from the corner of his eyes. She’d made her way around in slow steps to just out of sight without Jackson turning his head when she replied again.
“Well…You’ve come seeking Imps now, haven’t you?”
“Yes, my queen, I have,” he answered honestly.
“And do you know the true nature of an Imp?”
“I know that they are not little faerie folk and that they can be most threatening at times, not to be trifled with,” he answered again.
“Well then. Why do you seek them out this night?” she asked coyly. She had nearly made it around his back and to the other side, such that he had to turn his head the other direction, since he was insistent that he not move his feet in showing respect to his hostess.
Jackson tugged his suit coat down and cleared his throat. “I want to have proof of their existence. Other than that, the business of knowing is for myself.”
“I see.”
She progressed eyefully to her beginning stance on the lap she’d just taken around the human. Then crossing her arms, she squatted down and sat cross-legged on the ground before him. She gestured and he followed suit. The motion was apparently appetizing to the rest of the goblins because they bustled a bit, and seemed to be drooling as they moaned and growled. Puck seemed to be caught under a goblin palm pressed onto his left shoulder to hold him in place. Though he was scowling, he definitely did not look comfortable with his position in the ring.
“You know the Imp wut you met before? When you were but a kitten?” She sneered at him.
Agent Davison nodded and attempted to keep a clear demeanor. Now was not the time to reminisce the very frights from his youth that brought him on this very quest in the first place. He had to maintain his cool in the goblins’ presence if he wanted to get what he sought.
She snarked at him. “I know that Imp well. Hers told us all we might wan tah know about you ‘fore tonight. Why do you think we were all willing to help you out so?”
Jackson remained quiet for a moment. “Frankly, because tonight’s Devil’s Night, the night before All Hallow’s Eve, and I thought perhaps in exchange for the information I seek you might satisfy your desire to torture a human. Am I right?”
She snorted and few of the other goblins did the same. Eventually she nodded while grinning broadly enough to show teeth that were clearly sharper and much more goblin than human. He figured he just about pinned the answer when she continued.
“You’re purt brave for a human, tah come out on Devil’s Night. A Full Moon Devil’s Night, no less! And actually seeking out some of the most evil of we faerie folk at that?” She tutted a bit. “Brave…but not very smart arrr ya, eh?”
“Well, then,” she asked as Davison remained silent, while she flicked her free thumb across the tip of the arched blade. “Why is it you want to know me name, human?”
“With all respect, my queen, so that I may know whose company I have been graced with this night. That is all.”
She chortled loudly and transitioned to an outright laugh, tipping her head back as if to see if the full moon above was listening. The other goblins too snorted and snickered and nudged each other.
Back to toying with the blade, she asked, without looking at Jackson, “You do know that goblins cannot be controlled by their faerie names…Like the little weasel wut brung ya here. Right?”
Though her English was rather good for just about any faerie folk, a roughness and immaturity wove into the vocabulary. Somehow, that too was intriguing to Jackson. I wonder if she’s single, he thought. But then the situation immediately brought him to focus. He was so enthralled he wondered almost if she were emitting any magic or perhaps a curse of some kind. Though a glance at the watch could tell him, he figured now was not the time, nor place.
Jackson was silent, so she pressed, though casual. “So…what did he tell ya his name be?”
“Puck, your highness,” the human replied with no hesitation. He caught Puck giving him a dour look but focused again on the queen.
She started laughing again loudly. It was unsettling though and seemed to reverberate. Then the goblin pack started harking at him and swiping arms and stomping feet threateningly. She stood, still laughing ominously. “Get ‘im, scrags!” she bellowed.
At first, Jackson anticipated the hoard to rush him and he spread his feet apart defensively and raised his arms ju-jitsu style. But though they closed, they made no rush. The goblins split apart, making room to the right of the queen in the circle. And then a wave of swelling, nasty black shining objects skittered quickly en masse towards him.
As they entered the clearing and rushed him, his fears were confirmed. The one thing Jackson still had not gotten a grasp of since his youth was his utter terror of spiders. They had been freely used against him by the Imp he had known, and the effects were still strong on him. He shivered and alternately slashed with his arms and another six inch blade he’d pulled from beneath his suit coat and then tucked his arms close about his head to protect it as seemingly thousands of spiders rushed him. They ranged from small black-widow sizes and shapes up to one nearly three feet across which seemed to do the majority of the lifting as they moved him in a wave of glistening black bodies to a tree on the backside of the clearing.
Goblins hopped away quickly, not wanting to be caught up in the mess. The Goblin Queen could be heard cackling and laughing much more loudly than any of the others as Agent Davison was strapped to the tree by webbing, his arms forced apart and pinned to branches of the neighboring trees. As the web was tightly drawn about him dozens, if not a hundred, of the smaller spiders scuttled all about his body, driving him mad with the reflexive itching sensation of crawling things touching one’s skin.
One of the larger spiders crawled through Jackson’s hair quickly and he yelled as it drooped in front of him from his forehead and looked him in the eye. He shook his head violently, not intentionally trying to remove it, but reflexively struggling to brush all the disgusting arachnid terrors from his flesh.
It swung away and continued up his left arm wrapping and tightening the web further, but another had climbed up from its work on his torso and stuck hard little legs into his lips to get a purchase, and then continued until one of the legs was poking and grasping inside a nostril, and two other legs on the opposite side of the spider’s body made purchase in his ear. It slid across Jackson’s eye on that side on its way up and over the human’s head. Agent Davison made an urgent gurgling and moaning sound as it did.
As the spiders finished their work and a few perched on his shoulders, on his head, and in his lap he leaned his head to the right as best he could and vomited.
The goblin queen stood rather closely at his outstretched feet on the ground and laughed, trying to calm herself as his retching subsided. When he finally finished she pointed the tip of h
er arcblade at the pixie still being held by other goblins.
“Puck,” Jackson mumbled through webs that helped restrain his head and neck as best he could, voice raspy from the acid of the vomit. “Puck, I ask that ye help me.”
The queen’s laughter started again, along with the goblin pack’s barking hacks. “Puck ain’t ‘is name, now ain’t it?”
Jackson looked at Puck and noted the fear in the little pixie’s flickering eyes, open maw and wringing hands. Yes, he decided. If he did get out of this alive he was going to kill himself another faerie this night. A faerie that had a lot of names.
“Wut? You think he’d ever read Shakespeare before?!” the Queen giggled. “Nah, hims name is Twern!”
She stepped forward and leaned in close to Jackson. “You know,” she breathed, “like hims half-sister, Twords? The Imp?”
Davison’s eyes glistened. The queen wasn’t sure if it was tears of fear, memories, or just from having upturned whatever fowl grilled foodstuffs the human had eaten for dinner. But she took pleasure in it all the same.
“The Imp wut you knewd as a kitten?” She grinned.
She held his gaze as she stood back up and placed her hands upon her hips, one still gripping the goblin blade. She shook her head and tutted again.
“Poor l’tle human kitten. Nows you understand what we’s done tah ya, don’tcha?” She stepped back to the edge of the goblin pack circle and then pointed her blade at Puck accusatorially. “But now that you han’t got his name direct from him, you can’t use it no how, anyways?”
Agent Davison turned his head as best he could to look directly at Twern. The pixie had nothing for him but a saddened look, upturned palms and a shrug. Perhaps the little faerie was more pitiful and was being used by the queen just as he had been. But…he didn’t think that would necessarily stop him from throttling the pixie to death, if he could ever get his hands on him again.
“Now…” the queen continued. “I reckon I owe you my name. It’s Indigo.”
She stepped towards her left side and seemed to be grabbing at one of the other goblins to pull him into the conversation as she continued speaking. She smiled almost pleasantly as she said, “Only I’s spells it with an upside-down ‘i’ like it was an exclamation point, right? I thinks it’s kinda clever that way.”
“Won’t do you no good though. Goblins don’t gots magic like that, and you can’t use it none on me.” She took some dark satchel from the goblin she’d drawn into the inner circle and worked at untying the strings that held it closed. Finally, its contents spilled into her palm and shone a glistening, moon-lit black much like the bodies of the spiders that had wrapped him.
“And!...I also promised you’d see Imps tonight,” she breathed heavily again and let out a soft chuckle. “I mean to make good on that promise, Jackson. Do you still want to?”
Jackson searched her face, her grin, sharp teeth and glowing eyes. While there was evil, there was also a certain amount of trust in the face. He nodded, then hoarsely and quietly said, “Yes. Please Queen Indigo.”
Standing straight again, she began an introduction. “This little slug of a faerie is what you would call a snarl in your language.”
Suddenly her English rung true, free of accent and a clarity of vocabulary. “I’m going to put this on your face…”
Jackson stared stone cold. At least it was not a spider.
“It’s going to work its way around, and then it’s going to find an access to the inside of your skull.” She smiled, both wickedly and friendly at the same time. “Once it’s there, you won’t get it out.”
She awaited Jackson’s reaction before continuing. He simply nodded in acknowledgement.
“But with this in you, you will see the Imps you’ve been looking for your whole adult life.” Her words were a promise and there seemed to be no malice in it.
“I’m ready,” Jackson replied, voice still raspy.
The palm-sized, black-skinned slug began squirming as Queen Indigo placed it upon his left cheek. It moved towards the agent’s ear first, leaving a glistening and cold streak of slime as it went in the cool October air. Jackson focused on his breathing is it probed his earlobe, then his ear canal and deadened the sounds in that ear with its body.
Laughing low and wickedly the queen taunted Agent Davison. “Ow! Is it’s gonna drill through your ear?!”
But having found a dead end it didn’t. It squirmed its leading protuberance out of Jackson’s ear and snooped around his temple, then his forehead. Not finding any inviting orifices there, it snaked downwards so that the length of its body had stretched out from his cheekbone around his brow and down his nose. Swinging left and right about his nose it probed the human’s left eye.
Not wanting to experience a snarl through the tear ducts he gently closed both eyes and waited. Soon the slug left the eyes and snaked all the way around his eyebrow and headed for the nostril. There it found the cavity it wanted. The slimy little faerie-slug started working its way up his left nostril with vigor and was soon half way in. It seemed to have an amazing ability to stretch its globule black body into a thin, worm like line that could easily find its way through the skull.
It became uncomfortable after it had found the recesses in the sinuses accessed from the nasal passages and began digging a bit. Jackson let out a muffled grumble. As it worked he spewed out a breath he’d realized he was holding far too long and then gulped in fresh air. The snarl really wasn’t making any audible sounds but Davison’s mind played tricks and he thought he heard or perhaps felt the creature chewing its way into his brain.
As the tail end of the snarl entered Jackson for good he gave out one last whimper. Indigo quietly spoke in a good natured tone, “You can open your eyes now Jackson. Go ahead. Take a look.”
The prompting had been necessary. Agent Davison didn’t realize that after the trip past his eyes he kept them shut the entire time the snarl worked on him. But once he did slowly open his eyes, he’d wished he’d left them closed. Within twenty-four hours he’d come to wish he’d never asked to see Imps.
All about the clearing there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of various faerie visages. They came in all sizes. Some were floating in the air space above the clearing and the canopy. Others were climbing and crawling through the forest. A few, he noticed, did not seem bound by the objects around them, such as trees. They simply floated through and around them.
Most of the faeries or spirits he was seeing seemed innocent enough. A collection of very small floating mockeries of sheet-ghosts he recognized intuitively as Jogah would come in close for an inspection and then back away again. One large ape-like furry beast swung through tree limbs around the border of the clearing and then stuck his face right in front of Jackson’s. Almost reflexively Jackson checked his watch to see if there was a red dot right in the very center. There was not. In fact, from what he could tell, only some of the goblins were registering as red. The bulk of them were yellow. And a small greenish blip apparently representing the nearby Twern shone subtly as well.
Once the monkey-beast had extracted himself from Jackson’s personal space, the human looked to the small pixie, Twern. He stood within twenty feet or so fretting with his hands and looking ashamed.
The number of faeries and other supernatural and magical creatures about him, beings who must have been surrounding him the whole time, began overwhelming Jackson. He started to weep quietly and had to shut his eyes as everywhere he turned there was another curious or sometimes angry face staring back at him.
The goblin queen turned around to her assemblage and pronounced, “He sees!”
Chanting in a guttural, unnatural sound the goblin pack alternately snorted and spat at the human. They raised weapons and clanged them together, apparently entirely oblivious of all the other unseen beings about them. Then the queen returned to Jackson and pressed her face very close to his.
“No
w you can see the unseen. Now you will see Imps,” she instructed. Then she quickly, almost imperceptibly to her accompaniment, gave him a quick kiss on the lips. She breathed out rapidly, blowing in his face as she did and he flinched.
Having accomplished her task she turned and stomped off into the crowd of goblins, and of course all the seen unseen from Agent Davison’s perspective. Some of the goblins followed. Others watched her go. Still more turned back to the human and pondered longingly as to why they weren’t eating him yet.
“Come boys!” Indigo raised her voice and snapped her fingers. Most of the pack obliged.
Twern had other ideas though and quickly moved to Jackson’s side. He started cutting away the spider webs as quickly as he could. “Quickly,” he mumbled. “This area is definitely still not safe. We must hurry away, now that you got what you wanted.”
Trying to stand and quickly stagger away with Twern grasping his hand to lead him, Jackson asked part befuddled, part angrily, “Got what I wanted?”
“Yes, now let’s hurry!”
“I didn’t get what I wanted. Twern! I’m seeing a freak show and I still haven’t seen an Imp.”
“Oh don’t worry about Imps, human. You’ll see an Imp soon enough. Let me help you get to safety.”
As they stumbled away and left most of the noise behind, the unseen seemed to be thinning as well. Jackson welcomed the realization as it meant he wouldn’t always have things creeping into view. Perhaps he’d get some rest after all.
“Why are you helping me Twern?” he asked as they’d made a good twenty or thirty minutes down the mountain.
“Because you asked me to,” the sprite responded. “And because my name isn’t Twern.”
Stepping roughly down the slope it took a moment or two for Jackson to think through what was said. Perhaps it was the snarl slowing his thoughts, or maybe it was just all the exhaustion from what he’d been through that night. But eventually he put two and two together. “Your real name is Puck?”