Backyard goblins, p.1
Backyard Goblins, page 1
Backyard Goblins
By Virgil Knightley
Copyright © 2023 Virgil Knightley. All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Front Matter
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Table of Contents
Backyard Goblins
Front Matter
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Back Matter
Dedication
To Joel, the one beta reader I used on this one. You always come in clutch.
Chapter 1
F resh air, cool breeze—not to be a walking cliche, but life was good, and it was only getting better every day as far as I could tell. And that was good news because things used to be…pretty bad.
Most people live in a city or a town. That used to be me, too, but now? I had my own three-hundred-acre slice of heaven in the countryside I called my own, remote and private. In fact, it had been days since someone accidentally drove by. It got a bit lonely every now and then, but I had an occasional visitor and my routine to keep me grounded.
Every morning started with the chicken run. I trudged out to the coop at dawn, kicked open the door, and greeted my pecking brood. The clucking mass seemed just as pleased to see me as I was them. A few quick flicks of the wrist and feed was flung wide. The coop came alive with excitement to see me: scratch, peck, cluck-cluck, repeat. Every single day. I don’t mean to make it sound monotonous or boring—I found much-needed free therapy in the routine and, though it might seem funny, the chickens were the only company I had.
Then, of course, came the watering. My plants were in no rush. They had all season to grow and were off to an impressive start—some were on their second harvest. They spread out leisurely across my tire garden and the adjacent chicken-wire surrounded fields. My crops sat patiently, waiting their turn for the slow pour from my old green watering can. You know the kind, right? Big plastic thing with the white sprinkler at the end of it? Tomatoes, beans, peppers, corn, and a variety of leafy greens—they all drank up, leaves shimmering in the early sunlight as I made my daily rounds.
Breakfast was always the highlight of the morning, of course. The journey from garden to table was short, just how I liked it. A pinch of this, a handful of that, all sizzling in a pan on the griddle over an open fire. Today I blessed myself with the rich smell of frying eggs and potatoes, seasoned with a smattering of homegrown herbs. I was practically moaning with bliss as the smell circulated through my converted shipping container home.
Life was comfortable, for sure. No, not yet fully off-grid, but I was getting there. My patchwork setup of solar panels and an old gas generator did a lot of heavy lifting on a pretty low budget. They buzzed along together, handily powering my work day in and day out. I even had one of those stationary bikes hooked up to a rechargeable battery, generating extra energy little by little, just in case, whenever I did my daily workout—I never used the damn thing, though.
The road to full food and energy independence? It wasn’t a sprint—more of a leisurely stroll at this point—but I was making progress. By the year’s end, that’s where I’d be: kicking up dust in my wake as I waved goodbye to my last ties to the dreaded grid. Well, for the most part, anyway.
That was my life now. Simple, serene, and always on the up. And as I settled down each night, the stars each winking at me in their way, I couldn’t help but smile because I knew the next day would be better, bringing me closer to my goal. And closer to permanently cutting myself off from the trauma of my past life.
Despite my ambition of living a life disconnected, I retained one guilty pleasure. Though it seemed odd juxtaposed among hand tools and vintage farming books with well-worn bindings, my modern smartphone still held a prominent place in my life. It was a contradiction, a nagging tether to the world I’d left behind, but a necessary one. Aside from my work laptop, which I rarely used, it was my only conduit to what little family I had back in the city and the friends from my past life. Mainly Susie.
Just as I finished my morning routine and bit into a crisp apple from my makeshift orchard behind my parked 1971 VW Bus, my phone’s jarring electronic ringtone cut through the serenity of my home. The screen lit up with an incoming video call from Susie Quickly—my cute accountant and childhood pal who I could never quite let go of, even as I sought to leave everyone else behind. I propped my phone against a coffee pot and tapped it to accept the transmission, revealing Susie’s frantic face, making me almost spit up my water with amusement.
“Daryl,” she breathed, peering at me from over the ruby-brown rims of her glasses. “Thank fuck you finally answered, you boondock butthole.”
“Good to see you too, Susie,” I said, glancing at the digital clock above my bedroll in the corner as we started to chat. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of your pretty face this morning?”
“You can cut the Romeo crap, you shit-biscuit,” she snarled, waving a paper on the screen. “Why the hell are your taxes so complicated?! You don’t even freaking work, but you’ve got dozens of income streams set up. Why can’t you get a job at the iHop and call in sick once a week like a normal lazy person?”
“Is there something I can help you with, or are you just calling to show off your nagging chops?” I said. I punctuated my jab by taking a big sip of my water and making my eyebrows dance.
“It’s not the fact that you’re freelance that fucks my butt, Daryl. It’s all these little payments that I have no idea how to classify...Look—this one’s a royalty for some self-help book you wrote a year ago, this is a PayPal transaction for some stuff your garage sale cruising task force sent you after their latest haul, here’s a bank transfer for God-knows-the-fuck-what...they’re coming in from everywhere, and literally none of them are earmarked properly. I’m drowning, Daryl. I’m in the stormy seas of Fuck Your Face and I’m drowning here.”
“Relax,” I told her, taking another bite of my breakfast. “Seriously, we’ve got months before tax season.”
“Yeah, but most of this shit qualifies as self-employment, so you have to submit quarterly payments, you butt-nugget,” she growled, adjusting her glasses and her auburn pigtails. “You’re not new to this. Help me out here.”
“Alright,” I sighed. “Email the statements to me you need clarification on and I’ll find some time to take a look.”
She glanced back at her screen, her expressive eyes scanning something before she let out a grateful sigh. A small smile replaced the tense line of her mouth. She looked back at me. “You fucking owe me, dude.”
Susie Quickly was my old friend who grew up on, literally, the other side of the train tracks from my house, just two blocks away. She and I always got along swimmingly, and we even dated for a year in high school before I dumped her after the Prom—well, it was mutual. We went right back to being besties the next damn day.
Back then I was kind of a nerd, always focused on my goal of becoming a teacher, researching Praxis tests half a decade before it’d be relevant to me. Anyway, Susie and I went our separate ways when I decided to go to the cheap state college in town and she went to a prestigious private university for accounting. In the end, she was making decent money, but at twenty-nine I’d already abandoned teaching and retired thanks to other money-making schemes. Stuck in the city, grinding away as an accountant, I think she kind of resented me for that. I would if I were her.
I decided to take her statement seriously, though. “Fine, I owe you. What do I owe you? A bottle of wine? A case of Leinenkugels?”
“Summer Shandy, please, but no,” she said, looking both ways and leaning in so that her cute face encompassed the whole screen. “I’m going to come visit you this weekend. Mama needs at least two out of three holes filled, and she isn’t picky.”
I spat up half my water and choked on the rest, wiping my face with a nearby hand towel as she crossed her arms and rolled her eyes at me from the screen in front of me. “Susie!” I shouted in surprise. “Aren’t you at work?”
“Everyone’s in a meeting.”
“Fuck one of those guys,” I suggested.
She shook her head. “Even dogs don’t shit where they sleep.”
I nodded as I thought about my own childhood pet. “That’s true.”
“So are we gonna do it or not?”
I blinked. “Do what exactly?”
“Fuuuck, dumbass. It’s been months,” she sighed. “I’ll sit on your face. I know how much you like that.”
A soft tear pooled at the corner of my eye, my heart thudding in my chest. “Don’t make such a beautiful promise if you don’t intend to fulfill it,” I muttered. “If indeed you do make my face your throne—I shall oblige. But, y’know, most accountants just charge extra when things get complicated, though.”
“Oh, don’t worry, bitch, I’ll do that too,” she cackled. “Just stay put on the weekend, will you? I’ll drive down. Not like you have anywhere else to be.”
I smirked at her image on my phone. “Buy condoms.”
“No, I fucking hated when we used condoms last time,” she groaned, her face scrunching up in a way that I would have found adorable if not for the cursed words she was speaking. “You’ve been inside me a million times over the years. I don’t see why we need to fuck around with rubbers at this point.”
My eyebrow twitched. “Are you back on the pill for me?”
She blushed and bit her lip. “Maaaybe. If you’re skittish, just don’t finish in my baby box.”
We shared a laugh before I ended the call, leaving me in the silence of my home. The only sounds now were the clucks of chickens outside and the tweets of other birds I was personally and professionally unaffiliated with. I glanced around, letting the idea of the upcoming visit from Susie sink in. The hens would surely be thrilled to have another lady around, if only long enough for a ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am’ to play out. Then again, she tended to be pretty clingy the morning after.
Still, I kind of took issue with something she said. Contrary to Susie’s quip, it wasn’t that I had nowhere else to be, it’s that there was nowhere else I’d rather be—nowhere else that offered such calm, such peace, and so few links back to the memories I tried to leave behind. I was the king of my little three-hundred-acre kingdom, and let me tell you, it was reasonably good to be king.
Take, for instance, my castle. Not so much a castle, really, as a shipping container. Sounds odd, sure, but this wasn’t just any shipping container. This was my combined bedroom and office, my headquarters if you will. Converted with care, the walls lined with polished wood and insulated properly, the place boasted a cozy bedroll tucked into one corner and a well-worn desk in the other. There was more, too, of course. Everything had its place. Every task had its designated zone.
And tasks should never mix with the wrong zones. My bed was for sleeping. My desk chair was for work. The little coffee table in the corner was for eating, with cushions on the ground to sit on. To let one bleed into the other was anarchy. I’d seen what happened when wires got crossed, and it was a tired, distracted mind and a backache at best. No sir, not for me.
A short stroll away from my main residence, a funky VW Bus held court. This was my escape, my Zen lodge. It had also been converted, with the backseats torn out. I had installed a soft rug, plus I kept a ton of pillows, a radio, a CD player, and a mini-fridge in there. This was where I meditated and where I took my midday rests. It was a separate entity from the shipping container—a sanctuary. Its smooth windows welcomed sunlight, its interior, with an Indian-style rug I bought on a trip to Malaysia, invited calm. It was a whisper of reassurance in the form of a vehicle.
But my domain extended far outside the confines of my van and mini-home. Beyond lay my chicken coop, a quaint little haven for my feathered comrades. Each day, we’d have our friendly chatter, our exchange of feed for clucks and eggs. The girls knew the drill, and they played their part well.
Fields stretched beyond the coop, adorned with the patchwork quilt of my crops. They sprawled, tire gardens filled with a wide variety of produce, a feast for the eyes and the belly in the making. Each plant grew well thanks to my hard work.
There was a lush forest on my land, too—I didn’t mess around in there very often, but they were good for hunting and trapping and boasted a variety of small animals—birds, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, even a few foxes. When I was really bored, I’d still easily lose an afternoon exploring out there. Sometimes I’d hop the fence into the unclaimed land beyond, just to dick around and kill some time.
The other part of the property line, closest to where I had set up my living space, ended with a serene lake, part of which was netted off to separate my part of the lake with whatever real estate company or individual owned the other half of it. No one lived on that plot, so I figured it was someone hoping to sell it off to someone like me. I had half a mind to buy it, but I knew they’d ask me for a nutty price once they figured out I owned this plot.
The day pressed on, and I ran through my peaceful routine with nothing special occurring. As the evening settled in, I began my usual cooking ritual. Veggies sizzling, freshly caught rabbit roasting on my humble grill. And then, with the abruptness of an unexpected slap to the buttocks, the ground shook.
“What the hell is even that?” I muttered, looking around to see my salt shaker falling off the tray sticking out the side of my grill, landing on the grass. Suffice it to say earthquakes weren’t the norm in these parts. The vibrations under my feet certainly felt like an earthquake, but it had to be something else. Something localized. An explosion? Everything my mind raced to was unpleasant and only raised more questions.
As the evening bled into night, nothing else happened, but I couldn’t sit on my ass without checking things out. After I finished my dinner, I decided to gear up and investigate. Grabbing a flashlight and my trusty belt of tools, I cinched the latter around my waist. The final touch was my hunting rifle. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but it’s always best to be prepared, I figured. I also had a handgun, a Glock 19, but if I was dealing with an animal, the rifle would be the better choice—and I never really used the handgun before, to be honest.
Under a starlit sky, I made my rounds, my voice echoing out in the darkness. “Hello? Anyone need help?” It was a two-birds-one-stone approach. If some big animal was lurking out there, hopefully my shouts would scare it off. And if someone needed a hand, my voice could inspire them to call out for help.
To my surprise, after the third such callout, I did hear a sound in response. Giggles. High-pitched, the sound of sweet laughter echoing through the still night. They were adult giggles, the kind you’d expect at a cocktail party, not out here in the wilderness. Even so, they were oddly high-pitched. It brought to mind Stacy from college, a girl whose voice was as piercing as a fire alarm at a library. I remember my friend, Tanner, embarking for the better part of an academic year on a personal quest to sleep with her…just so he could find out the kind of noises she made in bed.
Blinking in surprise, I continued my search, following the sound of laughter to its source. And that’s when I found it. A cave, tucked into the side of a rocky hill—a hill I swore had been a low mound the mere hours before. The mouth of the cave gaped open like a dark maw in the dim light. The giggles echoed from its depths, teasing and inviting me in equal measure.
“Alright, Daryl,” I muttered to myself, tightening my grip on the flashlight, “time to see what’s so funny.”
My heart thudded in my chest in fear, even though the sound I’d heard shouldn’t have inspired much of that. It was still creepy though, like the sound of cursed children in a horror movie. Even so, I couldn’t just do nothing when someone was on my property who didn’t belong immediately following a mysterious earthquake.
“Who are you?” I shouted, deciding to ask that question before going further. Unfortunately, the inquiry inspired the laughing women into silence.
The path into the cave wound briefly before abruptly ending. Just as I reached the dead end, my flashlight flickered and died. “Fricking typical,” I said, fumbling for the spare batteries in my hip pouch.
In the utter darkness, I noticed something...unusual. Three pairs of eyes gleamed back at me. One pair burned red, another shone a bright yellow, and the last glowed a muted grayish-brown. The eyes seemed attached to the earlier source of the high-pitched giggles, floating in the black canvas of the cave.
