"Glintsprock... Glintsprock..."
The voice was louder in his bedroom, but Glintsprock was determined to ignore it and get some sleep. After all, the voice was either a product of his own twisted imagination and therefore couldn't hurt him. Or it was something else... but ‘something else’ that hadn't hurt him all evening, so seemed unlikely to do much else now.
At the side of the room, Ribbit slept soundly. She was the best little frog any frog player could hope to have - mainly because she didn't try to kill him.
"Glintsprock... Glintsprock..."
"Oh, do shut up," he said, as he peeled back the blanket and climbed into bed.
In Red Fern, the nights (or very early mornings) were never still. While the moon bathed the realm in her beauty, monsters were free to roam, and their snarls and screeches and their howls and yells filled the darkness. At one point, Glintsprock would have joined them, but now their sounds were simply a lullaby to lull him to sleep.
A deep howl travelled through Red Fern, and Glintsprock drifted off. Just like he always did.
... Until he was rudely awoken. His eyes snapped open, and he held his breath. Someone was in the room with him. He could sense them. Perhaps if he didn't move, they wouldn't realise he was there and leave him alone.
'Don't be an idiot,' he thought, knowing full well that wasn't how the world worked.
Trying to appear as nonchalant as possible, he rolled over and pretended to go back to sleep.
Through the darkness, he tried to look at Ribbit. She still slept, completely unbothered by whatever tormented the goblin.
"Glintsprock..." It was that bloody voice again.
"Glintsprock... I know you can hear me..." the voice that could very well be Basalt said. The flow of words that followed felt rushed and unhinged. "Just know this... I'll get you... I'll get you good... NO SLEEP 'TIL REVENGE! I'm so very hungry, Glintsprock... and you'll be delicious!"
The goblin squeezed his eyes shut and tried to come up with a sensible plan. This was very hard to do as it was near impossible to think when he wasn't chewing on a toenail.
The way he saw it, he had two options:
- Pretend to be asleep and wait for the dawn. Not that there was any guarantee of safety when it came.
- Run. Running out into the dark meant he would likely meet different monsters, but the outside monsters seemed more appealing than whatever was in Glintsprock's bedroom with him.
Another option was that he could have jumped out of bed and faced his tormentor straight on. The issue with this option was that Glintsprock was a coward. Facing things head on was not his idea of a good time.
'Option two it is then,' he thought, as he wriggled out of bed and scurried to the bedroom door. He pulled it open, and a rush of cold air enveloped him, such was the way of the old house. What wasn't the way of the old house was the tired sigh that accompanied it. Or the door slam that sealed Glintsprock back into his bedroom.
Reaching out, he grabbed at the door handle and tried to open it again. It rattled, the sound mocking him, but it didn't open. It was as if someone was leaning on it, pushing against it.
"I will have my revenge," the voice said. "It's only fair."
"Who are you?" Glintsprock asked, unable to hide the tremor in his voice. Moments like this filled him with shame. He was a goblin! He was the one who was meant to strike fear into the hearts of others! And, yet, here he was petrified of a voice. A voice who was supposed to be a friend.
"You know who I am," she said. "You've known since I first started calling your name."
"Why are you here? Why won't you just show yourself? Then we can talk... like friends."
"Like friends?" A bitter laugh followed the question. "Friends... What a joke. Think back to our last meeting, Glintsprock. That will answer both why I'm here and why I'm just a disembodied voice."
Glintsprock stopped trying to pull the door open and sat on his bed. With no explanation, he lifted his foot and started to chew on a toenail. Almost instantly, ideas started to form. Connections were made. Memories resurfaced.
"I last saw you - if you are you, Basalt - right 'ere in this room."
"Correct," Basalt said. "What else?"
"We were going to assassinate some jumped up gnome. A rich bastard. Is that right?"
"Correct, what else?"
This was where Glintsprock felt that guilt again. "I decided I wanted the money for myself..." His voice trailed off as he pieced together the events of that day.
The payment for killing the rich gnome was high - higher than most of the jobs they'd worked on together - and Glintsprock had discovered that he wasn't very good at sharing. What he was good at was tying his supposed friend up and locking her in a cupboard.
'Oh shit,' he thought, as he glanced over at the cupboard on the other side of the room. The one he never used because he'd forgotten it existed. That's the way it went sometimes; he'd get so used to seeing something that he'd get to the point where he stopped paying attention to it.
"So what happened to you?" Glintsprock asked after he'd recounted his memories.
"What do you think happened to me? That cupboard ain’t been opened for five years. Think about it."
Glintsprock struggled to come up with an answer. In truth, he just hadn't thought about his partner in crime and assassinations for quite some time. Five years, in fact.
"Did you think I just climbed through the back of the wardrobe and found my way into a magical world? Well, I didn't. I found myself dead, didn't I? Dead... And hungry."
The way Basalt said the word "hungry" filled him with a kind of dread he'd never experienced before. But, if she was dead, what could she eat? Could ghosts eat? Glintsprock didn't want to risk getting snacked on. Little was known about the eating habits of ghosts and wotdafuqs.
"What do you want?" he asked, hoping she was just going to ask him for a pie from the local tavern.
"I've got a list," she replied. "I want my cut of that deal. I want revenge for the last five years. But, most of all, I want you to open this bloody cupboard."
As soon as she'd said those final words, a determined scratching sound alerted Glintsprock to the cupboard on the other side of the room. Boxes, clothes, and knickknacks had been piled in front of it, obscuring it from view. No wonder he hadn't thought about it for a while.
"Open it..." she said. "Open it now. I want to be free of this stale air. I want to be free of this prison."
Although following orders made his scales itch, this time he did as he was told. Clearing a path to the forgotten cupboard took mere minutes and soon he was close enough to touch it.
"Open it."
Glintsprock tried the handle. It was locked. Of course it was locked.
"I'm sorry," he said, as he looked over the mess of the bedroom. "It's locked and I have no idea where I might be able to find the key."
"OPEN IT!" Basalt was insistent. "What about your powers?"
Goblins are known for two main tricks: the first is the ability to turn invisible. The second is the ability to grow their fingernails and pick locks with them. At this point, Glintsprock tried the latter.
But still the door would not budge. Something sticky clogged the lock. Something sticky and foul smelling. Was this a hint at what was inside? Why hadn't he noticed the stench before?
"OPEN IT!" Basalt yelled again.
From his spot by the cupboard, Glintsprock looked around the room for something he could use. Luckily, he was the sort to collect weapons and things that could be used as weapons, so his gaze soon fell upon an axe. He raced over, gripped it with both hands, and brought it back to the cupboard.
"I'm gonna have to use this," he said. Basalt didn't reply.
Using all his might, he hacked into the wooden door with the axe. Wood split and splintered. The cupboard barely put up any fight at all, and soon its contents was revealed. Basalt sat where he had left her. Still tied up, Basalt had been unable to free herself, perishing in a cupboard a few feet away from where Glintsprock slept.
"Why didn't you shout out?" he asked.
"I did... to begin with. But it took you a long time to come home from that job. A week, wasn't it?"
The goblin thought back. "Yes, must've been." Actually, it was probably closer to two, but he didn't want to mention that. Especially since during those two weeks he'd spent time in a gambling den, losing pretty much everything he'd earned.
"Why'd you do it?" she asked. "Why did you betray me? We had a partnership."
Glintsprock shrugged. "You know what they say, don't ya? Never trust a goblin."
"I thought you were different." The words hung in the air, heavy with heartbreak.
"Well..." he said, not knowing what else to say. "Let's get you out of there."
He pulled what was left of the door away, giving himself a clear view of his friend. Basalt had wasted away. Mummified skin and bone sat in a puddle of something sticky. Probably the same sticky stuff that had clogged the lock.
"Get me out of there," Basalt said. "I can't stand to be in there a moment longer."
While small in stature in life, Basalt looked even smaller as a corpse. She was so tiny and frail that Glintsprock thought the slight touch of his breath would cause her to disintegrate.
"What are you waiting for?" she asked.
"I don't want to break you," he said.
At this, she laughed. "It's a bit late for that. Just get me out of there."
Swallowing hard, he reached into the cupboard and carefully placed his hands on Basalt's shoulders. As he touched her, he heard something.
A heartbeat.
It must have been his own, mustn't it? No-one could have survived being locked in a cupboard without food and water for five years. Yep, it had to be his own.
Dun... dah...
The noise came again. Glintsprock tried not to focus on it.
Dun... dah...
If it was a heartbeat, it was awfully slow. Much slower than his was, as his was racing at that moment. But he'd never let Basalt know that. Somehow, he felt that showing her any sign of fear and discomfort now would not work in his favour. She may have been his friend in life (before he'd betrayed her), but what was she now? Friend or foe?
Dun... dah...
Could Basalt hear it too? She was being surprisingly quiet. Just as Glintsprock was trying to decide whether to bring it up or not, the sound increased in speed.
Dun dah. Dun dah. Dun dah. Dun dah.
The sound built and built, raced and raced, until Glintsprock could take no more. He gripped ahold of his friend's body and pulled her from her grave. Bits of brittle skin and flesh broke away in his hands, and Glintsprock dropped the body in shock.
Even though Basalt didn't chastise him, he still apologised and picked the remains back up, intending to put there somewhere more comfortable.
With great care, he sat her in an old, but very cosy chair in the corner of the cramped room. It was his favourite chair, and he could only hope that she wouldn't ruin it with any death juices that might still be lurking inside her. Glintsprock enjoyed bodily fluids as much as any other goblin, but that didn't mean he didn't want nice things.
"Glintsprock..."
This time, the voice didn't come from just somewhere in the air. This time, it came from Basalt's body. Had removing the corpse from its prison somehow reunited it with her spirit? That was a job well done, surely. Maybe she'd forgive him now. He made to cross his fingers for luck, but found that he couldn't remove them from the corpse.
They were... stuck.
This time it definitely was his heartbeat he heard. Panicked, it sped up, desperate to escape. Glintsprock feared that if he opened his mouth to wide, his treacherous heart would race out the open hole and disappear. So he clamped his jaw shut, stifling the scream that also wanted out. If he wasn't allowed to leave this nightmare, neither were his heart or screams.
After a couple of moments of frantic movements (although they felt like a couple of lifetimes), he managed to pull one of his hands free. It waved in the air in victory, his scaley skin grateful for the freedom.
"Not so fast," the corpse - Basalt - growled. Her voice now was low, and full of menace. Glintsprock knew that voice well. She used to use it when they worked together and she wanted to scare the shit out of a victim. The fact that she used it with him now told him everything he needed to know: they were no longer friends. Freeing her from the cupboard would not be enough to absolve him of his sins.
An inky black shadow emerged from his former friend's moving corpse. It was long and thin, and snaked around him, wrapping itself around his trembling body, and trapping his temporarily free arm against his side. A powerful stomach-turning stench flowed from the shadow. It promised death. It promised endings. A little bit of urine dribbled down his leg. So much for hiding his fear.
As the shadow moved, it solidified, turning into something Glintsprock had never seen before. All he knew was that it was the most monstrous thing he'd ever witnessed. Its skin was smooth, but little round things covered the underside. The little round things sucked against his skin, drawing blood. Every time they sucked, Basalt looked a little fuller.
A little more real.
A little more alive.
What was she now? How was she back from the dead?
"How did you make it back?" Glintsprock asked, feeling drowsier by the moment.
"Oh, you know how it is. I met a witch in a little cafe in between worlds. We struck a deal."
"What did it cost you?" His voice slurred.
"The price was high," Basalt admitted, "but it was worth it. I'd pay it a thousand times over."
That seemed like a lot to Glintsprock.
"What made it... so... worthwhile?" The words were getting harder to say now. He surely didn't have much longer.
"Because now, I get to do this," she said, as her desiccated body pounced on him and teeth tore into his ear. There was an almighty ripping tear as pointed tip of his ear came loose in the wotdafuq's mouth. She laughed, clearly enjoying her first taste of anything in five years.
Empty eye sockets stared at him after she'd pulled away. Blood - his blood - dribbled down her rotten chin.
"Look at Glintsprock, missing half an ear," she said. "It's worth it to see your face right now. Worth it to witness your shame."
She wasn't wrong. A goblin without their ears was no goblin at all.
"Now I will take the rest!" A crimson grin split her face in two, and her tusks suddenly seemed extra sharp. Dried muscles clicked, still unused to movement.
"STOP!" he yelled, no longer caring how wide he opened his mouth. If his heart escaped now then fair play to it. "I'll do anything you want!"
"Of course you will," Basalt said, still using that low growling voice.
"I'll give you money. From the job."
"I know. You owe me that. I'll be taking it anyway. I neither need you alive or intact for that."
"But it's not 'ere," he said, actually speaking the truth. Don't worry, he was bloody shocked too. "I.. lost it. Gambling."
"Why am I not surprised?" she asked. "So, if you don't have it, what use are you to me except for being a good meal?"
"I can earn it back," he said, before rushing to add, "with interest." This appeared to get Basalt's attention. Although, what a dead monster needed money for was a mystery to Glintsprock.
"Not just money," she said, as she mulled it over. "It needs to be pure gold. And jewels."
"That can be arranged. In fact, I've got a little gold here now. Just to sweeten the deal. How does that sound?" he asked, desperation making his voice all high and pitchy. It was so annoying when that happened.
There was a long silence while the little sucker things continued to drain the life out of him, and he feared that he’d be dead by the time Basalt made her decision.
Finally, Basalt spoke. "It looks like we're partners again."
