She reached an intersection. Buttsack’s yellow eyes were on her, dancing in her peripheral vision as she strained to see the crosswalk sign without taking her eye off the page.
No crosswalk sign.
A shadow moved. A goblin was perched on the crosswalk light, blocking her from seeing the ‘walk’ or ‘don’t walk’ signs opposite her.
The same was true on her left hand side.
She couldn’t see the light either. She knew goblins could produce opaque bodily fluids in great quantities. Shit, vomit… They could break glass.
If she just looked up, she would see the light peeking through the smears or past the goblins.
She kept her eye on the page, and she took a leap of faith, stepping out onto the street, her attention on cars and their headlights instead. Traffic was light in this town, with as much traffic on the main roads as there was traffic on side roads in other cities. There was one car two blocks over. Too far away to be a problem.
Except it didn’t stop at the one intersection. The sigh? The sign. The goblins had taken down a stop sign, or enchanted it, or both.
She paused in the middle of the street as the car skidded to a stop. The driver hadn’t seen her, and the hard packed snow wasn’t so different from ice. Wheels skidded, and the rear end of the car wavered, fishtailing slightly.
The car stopped at the intersection with the blacked-out lights, nose jutting through the passenger crossing. If she hadn’t stopped, it would have knocked her over, maybe broken her legs.
She walked around the nose of the car, reading. The goblins were chattering, setting up the next bout of interference.
“Can’t stop her reading, but we can make someone else stop the little bitch from walking. Good enough. Um, um. Hey, Cumnugget! Get over here! Even half a brain can help brainstorm!”
Celebrating their liberation…
Where the hell was she supposed to go? She had no home to go to.
No friends, not really.
The closest things she had to friends were Blake, who wasn’t even here…
Padraic came to mind, which would be a laugh if it wasn’t so fucking tragically sad.
Who else did she have a connection to?
Molly’s ghost? Did the mute, unresponsive creature even count as a friend?
That thought led to another. There was a protective circle around Molly’s shrine.
But what happened after that? She’d die all the same if she stayed out in the cold all night, standing there.
No. What other options were available?
Laird?
She couldn’t say yes, not in good conscience, not so soon after thinking of the ghost as something resembling a friendly face.
Not with everything else the ghost represented.
“Wait, wait,” Cumnugget said. “Why can’t I attack her? I didn’t swear nothing.”
“You swore implicitly,” Buttsack said. “You took the clothing we used to find her, after hearing the terms of this game.”
“What if we get some jerkbutt that didn’t swear nothing?” Cumnugget asked. “Who isn’t playing the game?”
She felt a chill.
“That’s interfering,” Buttsack said. “Isn’t it?”
“What if- what if I just happen to walk by some place near here where some horny suckerbutts hang out, on my way to scout the way, and they just happen to follow me back? I’m not doing nothing ‘cept walking.”
“I think it sounds like you need to go for a walk, doesn’t it?” Buttsack said.
“Think it does.”
Her eye found the line, ‘they do tend to be stupid little creatures, don’t they?’
Where was she going?
There weren’t many options remaining. She turned left.
Harcourt ran North to South, dividing the left half of the city from right. Half the streets in the city transitioning from ‘Street Name West’ to ‘Street Name East’ as they passed the dividing road, or the other way around, depending on the direction in question.
The houses in Jacob’s Bell ranged from ‘shitty and dilapidated’ to ‘used to be really nice and are currently alright’, and Danvers Avenue West was one of the areas which tended to the latter. Houses here were old houses, dating back as much as a hundred years, suffering from less than perfect maintenance and all the vagaries that old buildings were prone to.
She didn’t know the streets exactly, but she was fairly certain she was in the right area. These houses had more presence, being larger. They loomed shadowy and grim like tombstones dwelling at the edge of her vision.
Her eye tracked the page, barely taking in the words, even as her mind turned over her options.
Still reading.
She didn’t know exactly where she was going. If she spoke in an attempt to find a connection to follow, this fat wrinkled goblin that followed her might accuse her of being finished.
Each footstep was careful. Her feet and hands were cold and numbness was seeping in. It might have been the cold, true. Still, there was a connection of sorts between that chill and the quiet horror that had seeped into her the moment she’d lost her name, yet to leave her.
Buttsack moved suddenly, waving.
Beckoning.
Cumnugget was here with the other goblins in tow.
The girl in the checkered scarf ran, thereading abandoned.
Her focus was warped, after so much attention given to the page a matter of feet from her face. The world appeared distorted, darker in contrast to the paleness of the page under the strong moonlight.
The houses all looked the same.
She could have kept running, maybe continued down the block for another minute or two, but the house to her right had a wrought metal railing.
She grabbed the railing, using it to arrest her forward momentum, turning to face her assailants.
Buttsack moved faster than he should have, given his bulk. A trick, maybe. Something.
Teeth found her shin, hard against bone, and teeth found her calf. Nothing hard there.
She fell backward, and she twisted over, falling on her back.
The pages fluttered free of her hand as she reached out to try and grab at his eyes. Too far down, the narrow eyes too recessed.
Buttsack grabbed at her leg, trying to find a grip. He was heavy, large. Bigger than he should have been. But in that scrabble for a grip, he gave her one chance.
She didn’t kick so much as she levered him back, like one might balance a baby on their shins, holding the infant’s hands.
She didn’t hold Buttsack’s hands. The wound in her leg screamed at her as she half-twisted, driving him into the railing.
Something hard in the goblin met the hardness of the railing. Metal sang its sweet song.
She reached into her pocket and found her keys, saw the goblin’s bulldoggy face, and realized there wasn’t a weak point to strike at, then thought twice about it.
Precious seconds disappeared as she used the railing to find her feet. Buttsack recovered just as quickly.
Other goblins closed the distance.
One, squirrel-sized, pounced onto her shoulder, a fork in each hand.
Small as he was, he was strong enough to drive the tines into the edge of her chin and through her jacket, into her shoulder.
She shrieked in pain and grabbed him, tearing him away, and jammed him through a twist in the railing, then wrenched him, so the inflexible metal twisted him the wrong way. Back or neck broken, easily.