Charles L. Grant - X-Files 01 - Goblins.pdf

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Goblins
The X Files
Charles Grant
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as
"unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this
"stripped book."
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Harper Paperbacks A Division of HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022
Copyright © 1994 by Twentieth Century Fox Corporation All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers 10 East 53rd
Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
Cover photograph copyright © 1994 by Twentieth Century Fox Corporation
First printing: December 1994 Printed in the United States of America
HarperPrism is an imprint of HarperPaperbacks. HarperPaperbacks, HarperPrism, and colophon are trade-marks of
HarperCollins Publishers10 9 8
This is for Chris Carter, no question about it.
Because, quite literally, without his wonderful and addictive show, this book wouldn't exist, and I
wouldn't have anything to do on Friday nights but work.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many, many thanks, for reasons that would probably bore you to tears, to:
John Silbersack, editor and keeper of the edito-rial whip, for extreme patience under fire, and helping
me keep mine;
Howard Morhaim, fastest and best damn agent in the West;
The Jersey Conspiracy, whose enthusiastic sup-port kept me sane, and whose invaluable assis-tance
steered me away from making too many stupid mistakes—it isn't their fault if I made them anyway;
T. Liam McDonald, for the inside scoop;
Ms. Carolee Nisbet, Public Affairs Office, Fort Dix, New Jersey, who was always gracious and
helpful, especially when blathered memories of basic training kept getting in the way of intelligent
discussion—if you don't recognize some of the post as described here, the changes were made for story
reasons only, not because Ms. Nisbet steered me wrong.
And last, but never least, to Ashley McConnell, who called one night and ordered me to watch the
show, sent me information I couldn't do without, and still hasn't said, "I told you so." Yet.
ONE
The tavern was filled with ghosts that night.
Grady Pierce could feel them, but he didn't much care as long as the bartender kept pouring the
drinks. They were ghosts of the old days, when recruits, mostly draftees, were bused almost daily into
Fort Dix for basic training, scared or strut-ting, and hustled out of their seats by drill instructors with hard
faces and hard eyes who never spoke in less than a yell. The scared became terrified, and the strutters
soon lost that smug look they wore—it was apparent from the moment they were shorn of their hair that
this wasn't going to be a Technicolor, wide-screen John Wayne movie.
This was real.
This was the real Army.
 
And there was a damn good chance they were going someplace to die.
Grady ought to know; he had trained enough of them himself.
But that was the old days.
This was now, and what the hell—if the ghosts of the boys who never came back wanted to stand
behind him and demand he teach them again and this time do it right, well, hell, that was what they did, no
skin off his nose.
What he did these days was drink, and damned good at it he was.
He sat on his stool, bony shoulders hunched, hands clasped on the bar before him as if he were
saying grace before taking up the glass. His face under the mostly gray brush cut was all angles, sharp
and dark with shadows; he wore worn and stained fatigues loose at the waist, a too-large field jacket
torn at one shoulder, scuffed hiking boots so thin he could feel pebbles beneath the soles.
From where he sat at the bar's far end, he could see the dozen scarred darkwood tables, the
half-dozen dark booths along the side wall, the twenty or so customers bent over their drinks. Usually the
place was close to bedlam with top-of-the-voice, not always good-natured arguments about the Giants,
the Phillies, the 76ers, the government. Waylon would be howl-ing on the jukebox, a game on the TV
hanging on the wall, and beneath it all the comforting clatter of balls over at the pool table, floating green
in the light of the single lamp above it. There might even be a few working girls hanging out, joining in, not
always looking for business.
Good thing, too, he thought with a quick grin; most of the gals these days were a little long in the tooth
and short in the looks.
Tonight, however, was pretty damn miserable.
Rain all day, changing to a hard mist at sun-down. The temperature had risen, too, slipping pockets of
shifting fog into the alleys and gutters.
It was April, nearly May, but it felt a whole lot like November.
He glanced at his watch—just a few minutes past midnight—and rubbed his eyes with bony knuckles.
Time he was having one for the road, then getting on that road while he could still find it.
He reached for the glass, one ice cube and Jack Daniel's halfway to the rim. He frowned and pulled
his hand back. He could have sworn that that glass had been full a second ago.
Man, I'm worse than I thought.
He reached for it again.
"You sure about that?" Aaron Noel, who was more muscle than any man had a right to own and still
be able to move, flipped a drying towel over his shoulder and leaned back against the shelf fronting the
smoke-fogged mirror. His white T-shirt was tight, the sleeves cut off to give his upper arms some room.
He was a younger man who looked as if he had lived one lifetime too many. "Not that I'm complaining,
Grady, but I ain't taking you home tonight again, no offense."
Grady grinned. "You my old lady now?"
"Nope. But the weather sucks, right? And every time the weather sucks, you get the mis-eries, drink
too much and pass out, and then I gotta lug your sorry ass to that sorry hole you call a house." He shook
his head. "No way. Not tonight." He waggled his eyebrows. "Got a meet-ing when I'm done."
Grady glanced at the window by the exit. Past the neon he could see the mist, the dark street, the
empty storefronts on the other side.
"So?" the bartender said, nodding toward the unfinished glass.
 
Grady straightened, yanked on an earlobe and pinched his cheeks. It was an old trick to see if he was
numb enough yet to go home and sleep without having those damn dreams. He wasn't, but he wasn't
drunk enough to defy a man who could break his back with his pinky, either.
If the truth be known, Noel was good for him. More than once over the past fifteen years, he had
stopped Grady from getting into fights that would have easily turned him into one of his own ghosts. He
didn't know why the guy cared; it had just turned out that way.
He considered the glass carefully, grimaced at the way his stomach lurched with acid, and said with a
resigned sigh, "Ah, the hell with it."
Aaron approved.
Grady slipped off the stool and held onto the bar with his left hand while he waited for his bal-ance to
get it right. When he figured he could walk without looking like he was on a steamer in a hur-ricane, he
saluted the bartender and dropped a bill beside the glass. "Catch you around," he said.
"Whatever," the bartender said. "Just get the hell home and get some sleep."
Grady reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a Yankees cap, snapped it open and jammed it
onto his head, and made his way toward the door.
When he checked over his shoulder, Aaron was already talking with another guy at the bar.
"Good night, gentlemen," he said loudly, and stepped outside, laughing at the way some of them
snapped their heads up, eyes wide, as if he'd just shaken them out of a nap.
As soon as the door closed behind him, the laughter twisted into a spasm of coughing, forcing him to
lean against the brick wall until it passed.
"Jesus," he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. "Quit drinking, quit smoking, you old
fart, before they find you in the damn gutter."
He paused at the curb, then crossed over and moved on up the street, keeping close to the closed
shops, the empty shops with plywood for windows, and decided as he did that he'd finally had it with this
burg. As the government kept chipping away at Dix's assignments, folks up and left, and nobody came in
to take their place.
Hell, if he was going to drink himself to death, he might as well do it somewhere pretty, Florida or
something, where at least it stays warm most of the damn year.
He hiccuped, spat on the sidewalk, and belched loudly.
On the other hand, he decided the same thing every damn night, and hadn't moved yet.
Goddamn Army.
Too old, pal, we don't need you anymore. Take your pension and split, you old fart.
He belched again, spat again, and seriously considered going back to Barney's, to have a farewell
drink. That would shake them up, no question about it.
Half a block later he stopped, scowling at himself, and squinted down the street. The tar-mac was a
black mirror, streetlight and neon twisted and shimmering in the puddles. Nothing there but small shops
and offices, a distant traffic light winking amber.
He looked behind him.
The street was deserted there, too.
Nothing moved but small patches of fog.
You're spooking yourself, bud; knock it off.
 
He rolled his shoulders, straightened his spine, and crossed to the other side. Two more blocks, a left,
a right, and he'd be at the worn-down apartment complex where he had spent most of the years since his
discharge.
He could find the damn thing blindfolded.
He glanced back again, thinking someone from the bar was following him.
The end of the block, and he turned around.
Damnit, there was someone back there. It wasn't so much the sound of footsteps as it was a
presence. A feeling. The certainty that he wasn't alone. He knew that feeling well—it had almost driven
him around the bend, over there in the jungle, knowing they were in the trees, watching, waiting, fingers
on triggers.
"Hey!" he called, glad for the sound of his voice, wishing it didn't echo so much.
Nothing there.
Yes, there was.
Screw it, he thought, turning with a disgusted wave of his hand; I don't need the aggravation.
If it was another drunk, he didn't care; if it was some kid looking for a quick mugging, he didn't care
about that either because he didn't have anything worth taking.
But by the end of the block he couldn't help it; he had to look.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
A sudden breeze made him narrow his eyes as it sifted mist against his face, and when he did, he saw
something move at the mouth of a narrow alley about thirty feet back.
"Hey, damnit!"
No one answered.
And that pissed him off.
Bad enough the Army had fucked him over, and bad enough he hadn't been able to leave this damn
place and leave the ghosts behind, but he was not about to let some goddamn punk mess with his head.
He pulled his hands out of his pockets and marched back, breathing slowly, deeply, letting his anger
build by degrees instead of exploding.
"Hey, you son of a bitch!"
No one answered.
Nothing moved.
By the time he reached the alley, he was in full-bore fighting mode, and he stood at the mouth, feet
slightly apart, fists on his hips.
"You want to come outta there, buddy?"
A sigh; maybe the breeze, maybe not.
He couldn't see more than five feet in—three stories of brick on either side, a pair of dented trash
cans on the left, scraps of paper on the ground, flut-tering weakly as the breeze blew again.
He wasn't sure, but he thought the alley was a dead end, which meant the sucker wasn't going
anywhere as long as he stood here. The question was, how far was he going to push this thing? How
 
drunk was he?
He took one step in, and heard the breathing.
Slow, measured; someone was trying very hard not to be heard.
This didn't make sense. If whoever it was had hidden himself back there, Grady would have heard
him moving around. Had to. There was too much crap on the ground, too much water. His own single
step had sounded like a gunshot.
And the breathing sounded close.
"I ain't got time for this," he muttered, and turned.
And saw the arm reach out of the brick wall on his right.
The arm, and the hand with the blade.
He knew what it was; God knows he had used it himself dozens of times.
He also knew how sharp it was.
He almost didn't feel it sweep across his throat.
And he almost managed to make it to the street before his knees gave out and he fell against the wall,
staring at the arm, at the hand, at the bay-onet as he slid down, legs stretched out before him.
"Goddamn ghost," he whispered.
"Not quite," someone answered. "Not quite, old man."
That's when Grady felt the fire around his neck, and the warmth flowing over his chest, and the
garbage beneath him, and the fog settling on his face.
That's when he saw the face of the thing that had killed him.
The afternoon was pleasantly warm, the sky a sharp and cloudless blue. The sounds of Thursday
traffic were muted by the trees carrying their new leaves, although the cherry trees hadn't yet sprung all
their blossoms. The tourists were few at the Jefferson Memorial, mostly older peo-ple with cameras
around their necks or cam-corders in their hands, moving slowly, taking their time. A handful of joggers
followed the Tidal Basin rim; two paddle boats glided over the water, seemingly in a clumsy, not very
earnest race.
That's why Fox Mulder preferred this place over the others when he wanted time to think. He could
sit undisturbed on the steps, off to one side, without having to listen to terminally bored tour guides
chattering like robots, or schoolkids laugh-ing and horsing around, or any of the rest of the circus that
Old Abe or the Washington Monument managed to attract.
His dark blue suit jacket was folded on the marble step beside him. His tie was pulled-down and his
collar unbuttoned. He looked much younger than his years, his face as yet unlined, his brown hair unruly
in the light breeze that slipped over the water. Those who bothered to look in his direction figured, he
supposed, that he was some kind of academic.
That was all right with him.
His sandwich was almost done, a plastic cup of soda just about empty, when he saw a tall man in a
dark brown suit moving around the edge of the Basin, staring at those he passed as if expect-ing to
discover someone he knew. Mulder looked quickly from side to side, but there was no way he could
duck around the building or into the trees without being seen.
"Hey!" the man called, catching sight of him and waving.
Mulder smiled politely, but he didn't stand.
 

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