The radio blasted a Who tune. Racing down the Kentucky back-country, Silas purposefully let Betty, his ’68 Pontiac GTO, fishtail its rear end around the hairpin turn of the washboard dirt road and into a bramble of young oaks and sweetgum trees covered by drooping vines and dense foliage. The impact knocked off a few of the dozen Hopkinsville goblins clinging to the car, scratching at the windows and leering with their big, unblinking eyes.

“Sorry, Betty,” Silas murmured, as branches scraped over her cherry-red paint job. The sound was different than the claws of the goblins—that sound took him back to elementary school and Rusty Wilson running his nails over the chalkboard. Turd though he was, Rusty Wilson never looked at you like he wanted to eat your liver. These loathsome creatures did.

Two more of the bizarre three-foot creatures were peeled away by the gnarled branches of the oaks. Overcompensating hard, Silas swerved the GTO back the other way, and one of the goblins lost its grip on the edge of the hood and fell over the side.

Silas smiled as the rear tire bumped as it ran over one of the long-eared goblins. He chuckled to himself, but the pests were still hanging all over the car. Their unblinking gaze was unnerving, and he couldn’t help but wonder if their teeth were sharp. They certainly had claws that looked like they could rend his flesh.

A long tongue slathered over the windshield, temporarily blocking Silas’s view of the winding road. He stomped the brakes and a couple of the goblins tumbled over the hood, almost hitting the ground, but floating in the air instead. Silas gunned the engine and struck one as he drove on. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw two of them falling behind because, though they could float and fly, they were not swift.

Hopkinsville goblins weren’t typical Fae folk, being half-goblin and some part interdimensional gray aliens, all thanks to some deranged scientist crossbreeding them. They had escaped his lab twenty-odd years ago. Being part alien grey made them immune to Earthly physics. At least sometimes.

Pete Townsend’s keyboard solo reached its apex just as Silas hit the crossroads and pavement. Roger Daltrey screamed as the wheels did likewise, gaining traction after spinning out and jolting Betty forward hard.

Speeding up to seventy miles an hour made it difficult for the goblins to hang on. One by one they were flung off as the car increased velocity.

The final goblin had its fingers locked against the edge of the hood and windshield. It stared at Silas with wide, sad eyes as if it might want to plead with him, but for what? The return of its purloined companion? Perhaps. But he also couldn’t take the chance that it was trying to hypnotize him.

Silas flipped the windshield wipers on. The goblin reached for a wiper, and Silas jerked the wheel hard, sending the creature tumbling over the side and into the dark of the road at a hundred miles an hour.

Seeing it cartwheel in the rearview mirror against the early morning light made Silas smile.

A half-hour farther down the road, Silas pulled into the blinking neon lights of a mom-and-pop diner just getting ready for the morning breakfast rush. He brought the GTO to a stop in front of a phone booth out front. He got out and opened the trunk, looking down at a burlap potato sack that bumped and prodded from within. He smiled; this had been an easy job.

Silas heard a slight knock and glanced around. He didn’t see anyone but wondered if one of those Hopkinsville goblins had caught up to him. Nothing was moving besides a patron and cook inside the diner.

He eased the trunk lid down and went to the phone booth. An old truck pulled up with a couple of good ol’ boys inside, then a dirt bike parked beside Betty.

Pulling the phone off the receiver, Silas dialed the private number.

The bookie answered, “You got it?”

“I do,” Silas answered.

“That’s great, Sy! You’re amazing. Ain’t nobody else has ever been able to snag one! How’d you do it?”

“I deal in burning rubber, friend,” he answered cooly.

“Have it your way, Sy. You pulled off the impossible and got one. This is gonna pay off big time. The client promised an awful lot for delivery of these Hopkin things.”

Silas shook his head, it had been too easy, and he felt a little guilty about it. He’d hung out at the Sutton farmstead ’til 3 AM when the Hopkinsville goblins floated up out of the cornfield and made one of their crop circles. He grabbed the closest one, stuffed it in a sack, and threw it in the trunk. A passel of them came after him, but he’d shaken them off, and it was done. Weren’t no big thing. He didn’t feel right bragging about something no one else had ever done when it had been so easy.

“Well, nobody else was ever able to get one no matter what they tried. I’ll let the client know you’ve delivered. He should meet with you shortly,” said the bookie.

Silas could tell the bookie was clenching a cigar between his teeth with his mumble of a Brooklyn accent. “I haven’t told you where I’m at yet. Hell, I’m not sure where I am besides a diner.” He glanced at the blinking neon sign. “Joe’s?”

“I got it. I’ll let him know. He said he’d meet you soon as you had the package.”

“All right, I’ll get my coffee and breakfast.”

“You do that; you earned it. I’ll call with the next job soon.” The bookie hung up.

Silas replaced the receiver and turned around.

A young wiry man on a motorbike had raised the trunk on Betty and was pulling the potato sack free.

“Hey!” shouted Silas as he threw back the door to the phonebooth and rushed to reach Betty, but the young man gave him a salute and raced off on his bike, holding the potato sack which kicked and punched from within.

“Son of a . . . !” cursed Silas. The phone booth was ringing. He had the gut feeling it was the bookie again, but he couldn’t take the time to answer it now. He leapt into GTO’s driver’s seat and gunned the engine, spinning the car about in the dirt parking lot in hot pursuit.

The dirt bike was hauling south on the road, back the way Silas had come from. He didn’t like that. True, no one had ever seen one of the goblins in daylight, ever, but he didn’t want to get closer to wherever they were from. Who was this thief, and how had he opened Betty’s trunk? Unless he hadn’t closed it properly . . . Doubts flooded Silas’s mind. He thought he had shut it, and Betty’s magic should have kept it locked from anyone but himself, but if he hadn’t shut it right, he only had himself to blame and some damn thief lucked out at the right place and time. Silas didn’t believe in coincidences, but he had no other explanation at that moment.

Betty was gaining on the motorbike, then it vanished with a hard right onto a dirt road.

Silas had to stomp the brakes, leaving burnt rubber skid marks on the pavement before racing down the narrow dirt road. The trees loomed close, not allowing for more than one car to fit down the way. Silas knew he had to be cautious, but he had to get the package back. You let someone steal from you and lose a delivery, word spreads like wildfire in the community and good jobs dry up.

Silas had Betty rumble down the tight road at about twenty miles an hour. He had his window cracked and the radio off so he could hear better. He scanned the tall grass along the road, watchful for any spot a bike might have been able to veer off and hide. There was a slight shoulder that would make Betty high center if he went too far over.

The rapid staccato muffler of the bike flared up as Silas came around a bend, and the rider tried to race past him on the right-hand side, just a couple feet away down the shoulder slump.

Silas leaned over quick and threw the door open, knocking the rider across the shoulder and off his bike. A quick glance in his rearview mirror gave Silas new information too, the rider wasn’t human. He looked like a wiry little lizard man. A kobold!

Now that Silas had seen through the Fae glamour, he recognized his opponent for what it was—a denizen of the Other America, a being that lived with one foot in our world and one foot in another. Why did things have to be this complicated?

Silas jumped out, ready to pummel the kobold rider and take back what was his. The kobold was on the ground with the wind knocked out of him, and there was no sign of the potato sack.

“Where is it?” Silas asked, gripping the fallen kobold by the collar.

The kobold, lying on the ground, blinked and shook his head with a toothy venomous grin that looked like he had just sucked a lemon.

Silas popped him in the mouth for that grin. “Where is it?”

“Ow!” moaned the kobold with split lips. “I thought you weren’t supposed to react like this.”

“Where is it?” He popped him once more.

“Keep away,” mumbled the kobold through bleeding lips.

Silas popped him again and then, picking him up by his jacket, tossed him down the embankment. “How’d you open my trunk?”

“It was open,” coughed the kobold.

Silas shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. I shut it.”

Looking like he was unsure of how far Silas might take this pummeling, the kobold admitted, “You thought you did. But I had a deal with a farfadet that shot an enchanted ash tree bolt into your lock as it was raised. Very subtle, but it didn’t lock when you put it down.”

“How long have you been watching me?”

“We’ve been following you all night,” answered the kobold.

“We? Who is with you? How many?” Silas asked before slugging him in the gut.

The kobold hunched over but nodded. “Three of us. A boggart, farfadet, and me.”

“No games, I just want what’s mine.”

“Keep away,” taunted the kobold, bracing for another punch, but Silas just shoved him, letting him fall over.

“Where is the sack?”

“Terry, my boggart compatriot, has it yonder. Up over the hill.”

“Let me get this straight, a kobold, boggart, and farfadet team up to steal from me? Why?”

“We were paid a lot.”

Silas sniffed at that before slugging the kobold once more. “All the effort to take from me, why not just grab one of the Hopkinsville creatures yourself? That would have been less painful.”

“They won’t show up for Fae or hardly any humans either. They don’t trust anything after what’s been done to them. We had to hang far back to let them approach you. Very skittish creatures.”

“What’s been done to them? Who wants one? What are the bug-eyed things even good for?”

“They’re real good at making crop circles,” offered the kobold.

“Who cares enough about that to want one?”

“Dark alchemist sorcerers looking to recreate their strange bilateral makeup.”

Silas was suspicious. “How would a kobold know so much about them?”

“Only because we were getting paid to steal one from you and then deliver it.”

Silas pondered that as he got back in the car and reversed, running over the fallen bike’s tires, bending it beyond recovery. The kobold looked in shock at his ruined bike as Silas reached out the door and grabbed him by the collar and slowly pulled forward, tugging the wiry young thing along with him as he drove up the dirt road.

Stumbling to keep up, the kobold complained, “Hey, heroes aren’t supposed to act like this!”

“Who said I’m a hero?”

“The client said you were. Said you had a noble heart. Only a person of noble intentions could approach a HopGob and catch one.”

“Noble heart?”

“That’s what he said,” agreed the kobold. “You’re noble, even if you’re short and have a big ego.”

Silas didn’t want to dignify any of that, though he was curious. “And who said that? Who is the client?”

“I don’t know, didn’t see his face, a dark alchemist sorcerer, I’d wager.”

“You’re gonna talk,” Silas answered, speeding up a little. He looked for where the kobold might have secreted the sack. A barn and small farmhouse were just around the corner, and the logical spot for the bike’s turnaround, but where was the sack?

“I don’t have it, I gave it to the next runner,” coughed the kobold. “There.” He pointed at the road winding through the trees and venturing up and over a chestnut covered ridge before disappearing into the verdant greenery. “He’s on the other side of the hill, getting into his plane.”

Silas frowned, it was too early for this kinda mess. “That’s the boggart and my sack?”

The kobold gave a defeated nod. “Yes. I was supposed to distract you, but you won’t catch him. He’ll take his bird and fly away.”

Silas pondered the kobold’s face, and his gut determined the wiry lizard man told the truth. He let him go and raced Betty down the road after the truck. He rounded the bend, narrowly avoiding going into the trees as the road wound up and over an embankment and back down a steep hill. At the bottom, the trees cleared and there was a small airfield with a Quonset hut hangar and a Cessna beginning to taxi down the runway.

The pilot looked toward Silas and gunned the engine.

Silas floored Betty to catch up and block the plane’s escape, but it was too late, the whining engine roared and the plane went airborne just as Silas veered over to block the end of the grassy runway.

The pilot looked back and shook his fist in victory.

“Yeah, yeah,” Silas answered as he sped out of the airfield and went back up the hill. He hadn’t gone far when he caught back up to the kobold pushing his crippled bike.

Silas stopped, and the kobold was so startled he fell down on the shoulder, crying out “Uncle!” as he raised his hands to avoid another thrashing. “I told you the truth!”

“A little too late. You’re gonna answer me straight. Where is that plane going?” Silas cocked a fist, ready to strike and put just a little fear of God into the kobold.

The kobold eyed Silas’s raised fist warily. “Aw what’s the use. All right. He’s going southwest of Louisville over to Petri. Hancock’s airfield on the river. But you’ll never make it. By the time you get there, the package will have been handed off and long gone. Ain’t nobody there is gonna be able to tell you anything, I’m sure.”

“Why should I believe that? I got you to talk, didn’t I?”

“Folk can only tell what they know. Terry and I were hired to get the package from you, the client will get it next, and I suspect even you won’t want to tangle with him. He scared me.”

Silas thumbed at himself. “He won’t want to tangle with me.”

The kobold gave him a dubious look.

Silas hit the gas, racing back down the dirt road, and once he reached asphalt, he gave Betty the full weight of his foot. He got her up to eighty miles an hour on the twisting road and, soon enough, at the Western Kentucky Parkway he was doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour. The road was straight enough with light traffic this morning that Silas decided to chance it. He reached into the glovebox and withdrew a small bottle of clear water marked with a cross.

He leaned back and glanced at a burnt section of carpet on the floorboards in the middle of the back seat just over the drive shaft and in front of the axle.

“Sorry, Betty,” he said as he poured the holy water on the burnt spot.

The engine screamed like a demon and the car jerked forward as if nitrous had been injected. The GTO hurtled forward at over two hundred miles an hour. It was all Silas could do to keep it on the straight and narrow, speeding toward Petri.

He zoomed past big horse pasture ranches and over the rolling hills, catching air and bouncing on the landing. You gotta keep your wheels straight doing than and definitely not tap your brakes. Silas had learned that the hard way when he was a kid.

Silas spotted the Cessna coming in for a landing near the Hancock field. He raced Betty through the gate and stopped by the single open hangar. A slack-jawed kid was watching the Cessna come in for a landing.

“You know whose plane that is?” Silas asked.

“Yes, sir, that’s Terry Boggart’s bird.”

“Boggart? Is he going into that hangar there? Or does he park it outside?”

“He has a spot in the hangar, sir,” answered the kid.

“Much obliged. I’m an old friend and want to surprise him, that cool with you?” asked Silas as he pulled inside the hangar just as the Cessna was touching down.

“Sure,” answered the kid, despite Silas not waiting for an answer.

He rumbled Betty to the inside of the hangar and kept her tight, where she would not be seen until the plane entered.

He heard the Cessna touch down and roll up to the hangar. He had beaten the plane by minutes, but he didn’t want the boggart pilot to take off again, so he watched carefully.

The plane’s throttle eased in toward the hangar and then the engine shut off. The kid took his utility vehicle and towed the plane inside.

Soon as the plane was inside, Silas hit the button to close the doors.

The boggart pilot, seeing the light dim as the doors closed, turned about and saw Silas there with his arms folded. The boggart knew he was trapped and cursed at the kid driving the utility vehicle.

The kid’s eyes widened, realizing his mistake at allowing the stranger inside.

“Get out of here, kid,” Silas said, thumbing at the side door.

The slack-jawed youngster quickly availed himself of the exit.

The boggart frowned but opened the door of the plane and dropped to the deck. He was short, maybe three feet tall. He pulled the sack free of the plane’s cabin. It was almost as big as he was, the HopGob still inside prodding at the barrier.

“Give me the sack and tell me who put you up to this and I won’t have to get tough,” Silas growled.

The boggart pilot gave him a sheepish grin. His wrinkled mahogany face looked like he fell off the top of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. The boggart rasped, “I don’t think I’m gonna have to answer any questions, mister. You got here unbelievably fast, true, but you don’t know who you’re messing with.”

“I’ve tangled with a lot worse than an old boggart pilot who thinks he’s tough.”

“Oh, I ain’t tough,” answered the boggart. “That’s why I got this.” He pulled a pistol from his coat pocket. “And now I think I’m gonna take your car and go. You lost this chase, accept it.”

Silas gave him a stony look and didn’t move.

The boggart backed toward the car with the pistol still pointed toward Silas, dragging the sack. “Keys in it?”

Silas smirked. “Yeah, it’s running.”

The boggart grinned and backed toward Betty. The car rumbled louder as something gave it gas, and it jerked forward a full wheel’s rotation, slamming the boggart pilot in the legs, knocking him off his feet.

Silas sprang forward and grabbed the dropped gun.

The boggart got up off his knees and dusted himself off. “How’d you do that trick?”

Silas kept the pistol and an eye on the boggart but quickly grabbed the potato sack with the tell-tale fumbling from within as the HopGob kicked and punched. He held it up and stepped toward Betty’s trunk.

The boggart rasped, “You probably ought to just leave it, mister. The master is a coming, and he wants that thing real bad.”

“The master? Guess you know who your client is better than the kobold?”

The boggart wiped at his big nose and asked, “You didn’t hurt that kid too bad, did ya?”

“He’ll live, but he didn’t seem to know who you were working for. You tell me and I’ll forget about our differences,” Silas said. He kept his eyes on the boggart as he popped the trunk open.

“He was supposed to distract you longer, so I could get away.”

“Who are you working for?” Silas pressed, as he put the potato sack in the trunk, slammed it shut, and then tried it, just to be sure this time that it was shut.

The boggart grinned. “You’re a man that learns his lessons. You find the farfadet?”

“Answer my question,” Silas growled.

“All right, but you ain’t gonna like it, mister,” the boggart answered. “He’s a heavy hitter with you humans. A sorcerer and a scientist, he melds with the two powers. He has one foot in both worlds just like you.”

“I’m not like that at all. Go open the hangar doors now; you’ve wasted my time enough already.”

“True, and he is a lot more powerful in arcane ways than you.”

“I don’t care. Open the hangar doors.”

The boggart nodded and went to the door. He strained on his tippy toes to reach the button and pressed it. Daylight flooded inside as the doors moved apart on creaking rollers. The boggart gasped.

A tall black-cloaked figure stood not more than five feet from him. “You have the package?” it asked in a voice that resembled someone who eats cigarettes rather than smoking them.

Silas could not see a mouth in the shadowy cloaked form, just the glowing yellow eyes, but he heard the cold command all the same.

The boggart averted its eyes from the cloaked shadowy figure and pointed a stubby finger toward Silas.

“Give it to me,” it demanded, an aura of menace emanating from it like mist wafting from a cold river in winter.

Silas was getting used to these magical types having this ability. He did his level best to ignore the initial fear response, but it was still unnerving. He took off his sunglasses and stared into the glowing yellow eyes floating in the abyss. “Nuts to you. I get paid for doing my job.”

“Your contract was null and void the moment the package was taken from you.”

Silas rubbed at his chin. “You were my client and had this team double cross me? Now you’re welching on the deal?”

“It’s not personal, Mr. Danger, just business.”

“I take my business personal, Mr. Shadow. You set me up, and I don’t think I’ll do any business for you in the future, but I still expect to be paid for services rendered.”

The shadow laughed. “You’re in no position to bargain.” It sent another wave of nauseating fear at Silas, but when you have faced your Earthly horrors, carry the specters of loved ones in the backseat, and ride with a demon in the gas tank for as long as Silas had, well, these kinds of tricks just don’t have the teeth they used to.

Silas ignored the continued waves of negative vibes the shadow sorcerer sent at him. He put his sunglasses back on, got inside Betty, and tipped the glasses down slightly to look at his stymied opponent. “You’ll be getting a cancellation bill from my agent. Until then, you best stay the hell out of my way.” He pulled the GTO forward and gunned the engine, flooding the shadow sorcerer with the growling noise and load of exhaust in the tight, dead airspace of the hangar.

***

Back at the Sutton farmstead, Silas rolled up to the cornfield adorned with a massive crop circle. He got out and opened the potato sack. “I’m sorry about this. I’m pledging I won’t be trying to deal in this kind of thing anymore.”

The HopGob blinked at him and floated into the cornfield. It was soon met with a dozen of its kind.

Silas shut the trunk and looked again. The Hopkinsville goblins were gone, vanished into the cornfield.

***

Back at Joe’s Diner, Silas took a phone call right as he parked.

“This is not how it is done, Sy. What happened?”

Silas wrinkled his brow and rubbed at his forehead a long moment before answering. “The client set me up. He was never gonna pay and tried to snake it from me with his own team of thieves. I got the package back, but since he tried to put some kind of Come Hither on me, I ignored him and gave him a big whiff of my tailpipe and left with the package. Told him he was gonna get a bill for services rendered and cancellation due to his breach of contract. I expect you to charge something for my time and trouble on this.”

“Understood. That’s gonna be hard to enforce given the nature of things, but I will put in a word with the guild about it.”

“That’s all I ask.”

The bookie grumbled, “Next time maybe try to be a little more diplomatic. What happened to the package? There are other clients who have voiced they may want a sample creature. What did you call it, a HopGob?”

Silas laughed. “Nope. I gave my word I wouldn’t snag one of those little guys again.”

“Have it your way, but it could be a lot of dough.”

“Nope.” Silas shook his head, hung up the phone, and went inside the diner. He really needed that cup of java.

Copyright © 2026 by David J. West

David J. West writes dark fantasy and weird westerns because the voices in his head won’t quiet until someone else can hear them. He is a great fan of sword & sorcery, ghosts and lost ruins, so of course he lives in Utah.