Prologue: Welcome

1

If Tom hadn’t left his sweater in his locker, if he hadn’t gone back to get it, and if he hadn’t passed the main office on the way, the whole dark night might’ve been avoided.

“Hold up a minute, Tommy. Got one more run for you.”

Dammit. Tom had a fun night planned ahead. A great one. Pizza, beer, old movies, feet on the table, and the open prairie of the living room to himself.

“Where to, Jerry?”

Before his boss even said the city name, Tom knew he’d scratch his evening plans. He never said no to Jerry.

“Goblin.”

Goblin?

“Jeez, Jerry. Goblin’s what…an hour away? I haven’t been to Goblin in something close to…thirty years.”

To Goblin might’ve been an hour’s drive, but there and back would make it two.

“I know it,” Jerry said, making his most sympathetic face. Cigar smoke rose from the ashtray on his desk and curled about his big belly. “And I’m gonna give you triple for the run. The recipient gave us some extra. Wants it done his way. Very specific.”

“Triple? Wow. What is it, Jerry?”

Jerry shrugged and looked to a stack of papers.

“It’s a pain in the ass is what it is. Obsessive instructions. And he wants it delivered at midnight. No kidding. Maybe there’s a party going on or who knows…but I’d send you with a carload of uncuffed prisoners for this kind of money. There’s a whole list of demands attached to the crate.”

“Crate?”

“Box.”

Tom removed his yellow ball cap and ran greasy fingers through his greasy hair. Triple. That added up to $1.20 a mile. What with Goblin hanging at least seventy miles north (and maybe even more, Tom would certainly check), not to mention the seventy back, he stood to make a cool hundred sixty-eight dollars on a last-minute run. Tom could drop the box off at midnight and be in front of his TV by two in the morning. Hell, he could drink all day from there.

“Just follow the directions to a T, Tommy. The fella already made good on his money. Now it’s just up to us not to mess it up.”

The union had the drivers going at eighteen an hour or taking forty cents on the mile. Most of the guys opted for the hourly because most of the guys factored in the dreaded long wait upon delivery. But Tom had been driving for sixteen years and he knew this guy there and that guy here and by the time the option was granted he’d had his routes down pat. And if there was an unexpected delay? Well, that was okay, too. Tom loved to count the miles. He wasn’t about to give that small distraction up.

“You know, Jerry,” Tom said, smiling, “I kissed my first girl up in Goblin. Alice Pratt. She bit clean through my lower lip.”

Tom pulled his lip out for Jerry to see.

“Jeez. That’s something, Tommy. Maybe you could look her up.”

Tommy once knew Goblin. His mother had taken him there three summers in a row. His eleventh, his twelfth, and his thirteenth birthdays. Three summers spent swimming in Goblin’s deep lakes, not to mention the ice-cold Blackwater River, on whose banks Tom’s mouth was ambushed by Alice after she fooled him into thinking he was getting a kiss without a bite. He’d played games in the West Fields, walked through Perish Park. Still standing in Jerry’s office, he had detailed memories of passing The Hedges on the east side and driving between the two giant topiaries framing the highway coming in from the south. He recalled the savage tour of the slaughterhouse and the pleasant one of the Hardy Carroll Goblin Zoo. He recalled the owls, too; postcards and photos of the owls, keepsakes his mother had purchased downtown.

Tom smiled. A hundred sixty-eight dollars was a lot of money to revisit his youth. A place he remembered enjoying, if he remembered it right.

“It’s already ten fifteen,” Jerry said. “You better get moving if you’re gonna reach Goblin by midnight.”

Goblin.

“Thanks, Jerry. I’m on it. Thanks for the gig.”

“Thank you, Tommy. I was planning on making the run myself before you showed up.” He took a long pull on the cigar, then pointed at Tom with it. “The box is already on the lift. You’re gonna need that. It’s heavy as hell. And remember”—he held up his hands like it’s my job to say it more than once—“make sure you follow those directions.”

2

The box was easy to see from across the warehouse. It was tall, taller than Tom. When he climbed the lift and tried to move it, the resistance told him he didn’t have much of a chance without some help.

“Delivering lead?” He removed his cap again and wiped his hairline dry.

He wasn’t even sure how Jerry got the thing where it was.

Crossing the warehouse again, he started the smaller truck and backed it up. Then he got out and started the lift.

It made a nasty squawking sound Tom had never heard it make before.

“Sucker’s testing the lift.”

By the time the machine got it level with the truck, it looked to Tom like the gears were going to fold in on themselves. He climbed up into the truck, took the power dolly, and rolled its lip under the box.

Before trying to move it, Tom spotted the instructions, nailed to the wood.

DELIVER TO:

DEAN CRAWFORD

726 ROLLING HILLS DRIVE, ROLLING HILLS

GOBLIN, MI

48929

CONTENT: ONE BOX, 8 FT. X 3 FT. 110 LBS.

“You’re more than a hundred and ten pounds, buddy.”

He read on:

SPECIAL: DO NOT DELIVER BEFORE MIDNIGHT (12 AM)—

RECIPIENT WILL NOT BE HOME TO RECEIVE BEFORE MIDNIGHT—

DO NOT DELIVER PAST 12:30 AM—RECIPIENT WILL NOT BE HOME TO RECEIVE AFTER 12:30 AM. IF RECIPIENT IS NOT HOME (OR DOES NOT ANSWER THE DOOR) BETWEEN 12 AND 12:30 OR IF DRIVER MISSES THIS WINDOW OF TIME, DESTROY CONTENTS OF BOX.

“Wait. What the fuck?”

Here Jerry wrote in pen:

Customer is real serious about this…no typo. Destroy box if you can’t reach him.

There was more:

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPEN BOX BEFORE DELIVERY—MAKE SURE BOX IS SECURE—CUSTOMER WILL NOT RECEIVE BOX IF ATTEMPT TO OPEN IS EVIDENT.

Tom shook his head. Triple the money or not, this was a weird gig.

DELIVER BOX ALONE—DO NOT LOAD ON TRUCK WITH OTHER ITEMS—MAKE SURE BOX IS ALONE IN TRUCK—DO NOT GET IN THE REAR OF TRUCK WITH BOX AND TRUCK DOOR CLOSED.

“Okay,” Tom said. “Now you’re telling me shit I learned sixteen years ago, buddy. Think I’m gonna lock myself in?”

DO NOT STOP TO CHECK ON BOX—ONCE BACK DOOR IS SECURE DO NOT OPEN UNTIL YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT 726 ROLLING HILLS DR., ROLLING HILLS, GOBLIN, MI.

And this:

IF BOX SHOULD FALL OR ANY NOISE THAT INDICATES AS MUCH SHOULD OCCUR, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CHECK ON BOX—KEEP DRIVING TO DESTINATION.

Tom grunted.

“Well, I ain’t gonna let it fall, buddy.”

There was one more instruction, followed by another note from Jerry in pen:

DO NOT COMMUNICATE TO OTHER DRIVERS WHERE YOU ARE DELIVERING BOX TO—RECIPIENT WANTS STRICT ANONYMITY AND INSISTS ON DISCRETION.

So don’t go yapping on the CB!

Tom let out a long dull whistle. He’d been given some pretty far-out orders before but never—not once—had he been instructed to destroy a package if no one was there to get it. He’d had to bring a few back, of course, and sometimes they had you drop it off somewhere else, but never this.

“Goblin and back,” he said. “Come on.”

He tried to move the box by way of the dolly, but it simply wouldn’t budge.

“One hundred and ten pounds, my ass.”

He found that if he sort of knelt and put his shoulder into it, if he put all his weight into the middle and lower part…the box slid. And he was sweating when he finally got it against the wall. He had to take a second before wrapping the straps around the box and securing them to the truck wall. Then he secured the power dolly to the opposite wall.

“I won’t be seeing you until Goblin. And we’re both better for it!”

He got down from the truck and pulled the rope, slamming the door closed. After locking it, he walked to the cabin and stopped at the driver’s-side mirror.

He looked at himself.

“You haven’t been to Goblin in thirty years.” Then he smiled. “Think you’ll recognize the city? Think the city will recognize you?”

He heard a sound like a hammer falling a short distance to the ground. He looked over his shoulder, deep into the warehouse, then climbed into the cabin at last.

“Don’t let mysterious boxes freak you out, Tommy,” he told himself. “And don’t follow directions from people who don’t know any better than you do.”

3

He started the drive on edge but didn’t really know it.

He’d made it out of the lot by ten fifty-two and the map told him Goblin was actually seventy-two miles away. Cool: $172.80. And sixteen years of driving trucks had given him an excellent sense of timing, if nothing else. He popped in a cassette tape, smoked the butt end of a cigarette he’d hidden in the ashtray, and figured he’d reach Goblin by eleven forty-five. At an average of eighty miles an hour for seventy-two miles, with some give or take here and there, he ought to pass between the topiaries at exactly eleven forty-five…giving him some time to drive the additional twelve miles from the city gates to 726 Rolling Hills Drive.

Destroy contents of box.

Tom rolled the window down partway and thought he could smell a storm coming. What was with the loony-tunes instructions? Seriously. Was he delivering something illegal? Sounded like it. He knew a bunch of drivers who sniffed cocaine to stay awake—hell, there were even guys blowing lines for full three-hour runs—but he ran a pretty clean ship himself. After sixteen years of successfully avoiding all the seedy shit, he wasn’t interested in transporting drugs no matter how good the money. It wasn’t that good.

He knew a guy back when he started driving, a grizzly sort named Wernor Mount, who got ten years for driving a hundred and something pounds of—

110 lbs.

Come on. Could the unfathomably heavy box be a hundred and ten pounds of…drugs? Tom didn’t think so. He didn’t want to think so and he actually didn’t believe that was the case. Jerry must have gone over all that with this Dean Crawford of 726 Rolling Hills Drive…right? Jerry didn’t want that happening any more than Tom did. And Jerry certainly didn’t want a driver-in-the-dark saying,

I had no idea what was in it. Jerry just told me to get it to Goblin by midnight.

Not even for triple the money. No way.

But Tom was getting triple. How much was Jerry making on this delivery? Would it be beneath Jerry to pocket a few grand for a sideshow like this? Maybe. Maybe Jerry and this guy Crawford worked it out that they’d get an innocent bystander (a patsy) to move the goods. Get the illegal stuff into the hands of someone who honestly knew nothing and couldn’t point any fingers.

Destroy contents of box? Truthfully? This was nuts.

He turned the radio up. Rolled the window down. Definitely smelled a storm.

4

At eleven seventeen Tom thought he heard something like a giggle come from directly behind his seat.

He turned quick to check on it but the driver’s seat was flush against the cabin wall and Tom knew nothing could fit behind him.

Maybe it was the tires. Maybe it was the radio.

The CB suddenly piped up static and Tom jumped in his seat.

“Is Tomcat out there?”

Someone was trying to reach him. Someone had seen him out on the road and was phoning in.

He reached for the CB and stopped.

The instructions told him not to tell anybody where he was going. What would he say? Should he lie?

“Tomcat…it’s Beartrap here…thought I saw you out there…was I wrong?”

Tom felt a sudden surge of shame, as if he’d been spotted transporting something illegal.

Answer the CB, Tom thought. The instructions just said not to mention 726 Rolling Hills…Goblin…

Beartrap was an old friend. A fellow road dog.

Answer the CB. Come on.

“Tomcat?”

He picked it up.

“Hey, old Bear…Tomcat indeed. You saw me right.”

There was no response from Beartrap. Only static. Tom turned the volume up, but all it did was give him more static.

“Hey, old Bear…repeat…that was handsome Tomcat you saw on the road.”

Still no response. Only static.

Tom hung it back up.

“Well, Beartrap,” he said to nobody. “Let’s hope it isn’t drugs. Let’s hope it’s a shitty piece of art that couldn’t hurt a fly if it fell on it.”

5

If there was a fly in the back, the box might’ve fallen on it.

At eleven twenty-nine Tom heard a thud so loud he was sure it had to be the tires. He gripped the wheel and braced himself, already accepting the fact that he might not get the package to Goblin on time.

But it wasn’t a wheel. And he hadn’t hit anything. And nothing had hit him.

So, what then? What then other than the box falling on its side in the truck?

6

Once back door is secure do not open until you have arrived at 726 Rolling Hills…

Call it habit or professionalism or just plain interest but Tom didn’t care about this particular instruction. If the box fell, the box fell. And it was his job to see that what he delivered was in the same shape coming as going.

“And how will Dean Crawford know the difference?”

He looked at himself in the driver’s-side mirror and saw he looked a little wiry, gaunt, crazy.

The box was getting to him. The instructions were driving him nuts.

He pulled the truck to the side of the highway, let her idle in park, and got out. He hadn’t had to use his wipers on the drive so he was surprised to feel drops of rain upon his face and hands.

He walked to the truck back with the key out and ready.

Then he did something he hadn’t planned on doing at all.

Rather than opening the back, he put his ear to the closed door and listened. And the silence inside was somehow convincing enough for him to head back to the cabin.

“Sounds like it’s upright,” he said, turning on the wipers and putting the truck in drive.

Then he drove.

7

“Jerry?”

“Yeah, Tommy. You in Goblin already?”

Tom liked the feel of the CB in his hand. Like he was still connected to Jerry, to his job, to his life.

“Not yet.”

“Everything all right?”

“Sure. It’s just—”

“Just what, Tommy?”

“Just nothing. Just wanted to thank you again for the gig. Hell of a gig.”

“You getting emotional on me?”

“Suppose I sort of am.”

“Don’t mention it. You deserve all the big runs anyway. You’re the best driver we got and you know it. You gonna look up that Alice girl?”

“Who?”

“First kiss. The biter.”

“Oh…Alice Pratt.” Tom laughed. It felt really good to laugh. How could he be transporting something illegal and laughing at the same time? Didn’t seem possible. “I think I’ll leave her be.”

“All right, well. CB me after the delivery.”

8

With every mile the truck swallowed, Tom felt like the box was getting lighter. Not that the truck was easier to handle, no, but like the pressure of following those instructions was lessening.

Less time spent with a rule was less time to break it.

He thought he might ask Mr. Crawford what it was when he got there. Maybe it was like a riddle.

What’s sealed and heavy and might smell like a storm and might giggle and you can’t approach it under any circumstances?

The sort of brainteaser that pins you down before it tells you the answer and all at once you understand it so clearly that it’s shameful you didn’t figure it out on your own.

“He’d better be home,” Tom said.

Then he had a vision of himself in a stranger’s driveway, busting up the contents of a mystery box. Because of Alice Pratt he imagined this driveway on the banks of the Blackwater River, the pieces taken by the cold flowing water.

“He’d better be home.”

Was it a gift for a mistress? The secrecy, the small window to deliver, the hush money.

A Pontiac Sunbird pulled up next to him, and through its window Tom saw two young men pointing to the back of the truck.

“What?” Tom mouthed.

Through the falling rain, the men became more animated.

“The back of your truck!” Tom heard, before the faces with their open mouths vanished into the rain ahead.

“Did the back open up?”

Tom looked in the driver’s-side mirror. He saw no swinging door. He took his foot off the gas, then pressed it hard. No swinging door.

He didn’t want to admit what was so obvious about the sudden road encounter:

They looked scared.

Scared for themselves.

“What’s on my truck?” Tom asked the otherwise empty cabin.

Keep driving to destination—Do not stop to check on box—

He looked at the clock.

Eleven thirty-eight.

He was seven miles from Goblin.

He had time to stop. He had time to do his job.

9

Tom pulled the truck to the side of the road, the front tires in matching puddles of rain. He grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment. The short walk from the door to the rear of the truck went too quickly, it seemed, and he was facing the closed door before he wanted to.

What am I delivering to Goblin?

But the hollering from the Sunbird turned out to be just what Tom expected it was: a lot of fuss over nothing. What else but a burned-out taillight?

Tom smiled. He looked up to the back door.

“He’s not gonna know if you open the damn door, buddy.”

He placed his hand on the lock. Would this be the first time he ever willingly defied instructions on a delivery? Tom wanted to say no, of course not, but he couldn’t think of another time he had.

He unlocked the door.

“You see?” he said. “No fireworks. No bomb going off. No sudden police lights, either.”

The door screeched unoiled when he pushed it up.

And there it was! Lying on its side! The big box did tip over!

But…no.

Tom turned the flashlight on it and saw it was just the power dolly. He must’ve done a poor job securing it. The box itself stood exactly as he’d last seen it. Strapped in five times over.

He climbed up into the back of the truck. The rain came down hard against the metal roof and echoed in the rectangular chamber.

Tom stepped on something gooey and slipped and fell on his ass.

WHUMP!

On the floor now, he saw movement, a thousand insects, crawling at the base of the box. But when he trained his light on it, there were none.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Tom said. “I’ve got the heebie jeeb—”

“Drive.”

A voice. Unquestionably a voice. The echo of its one word lingered, round and round in Tom’s ear.

Then movement indeed. A shadow, a shape, just beyond the box, someone crouched behind it.

“Hey!” Tom yelled. “Is someone in there?”

He couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth.

“Driiiiiiiive.”

Headlights from the road painted just enough of the inside of the truck for Tom to see the shoulder of a silhouette, a pair of white eyes.

He felt tears swell up in his own. He thought he was going to piss himself. He wanted badly to be home, on that couch, eating pizza, pounding beers. He wanted help. He wanted someone to pull him out of this situation.

But it was his own feet…his own legs…that took him to the edge of the truck bed. The rain didn’t “wake him up.” He wasn’t asleep. It crashed against him like it would a windowpane. A flowerpot. A stone.

Numb in this way, Tom leapt from the back and pulled the door down quickly.

The box was still strapped in, wasn’t it? It hadn’t been opened. Had it?

So why did it feel like the owner of that voice had not sneaked into the truck at all? That, rather, Tom had dollied him inside himself?

He hurried back to the cabin and got behind the wheel.

He merged.

He drove.

At eleven forty-five he reached the Goblin city limits. Both hands were trembling white piles of dust on the wheel.

Tom didn’t know who the two leviathan topiaries were that greeted him, but they were George Carroll, Goblin’s founding father, and Jonathan Trachtenbroit, the man who brought all the owls so many years ago and who was later strangled on Pride Hill, strangled by the ancestor of the very man who trimmed these bushes. Lit from below with giant floodlights, the pair were as intimidating a welcoming committee as Tom had ever seen.

Why did you drive? Why didn’t you run? Why did you listen to that voice?

As he entered the city, he couldn’t answer these questions other than to imagine himself abandoning the truck and being tracked forever by whatever was inside it.

“I got a better question than why,” Tom said, wide-eyed and shaking as the traffic increased, as the landmarks and cityscape came into view through the rain-obscured windshield of the truck. “What have I brought to Goblin tonight, Tommy my man? What?”

But whatever it was, its white eyes must still shine in the back and the echo of its timeless voice must still be back there, too.

Tom was too late. He knew that, whatever was back there, he was too late in keeping it from Goblin.

He wondered when it began, this unforeseen route, hidden in the bigger route of delivering a package. Was it when Jerry called him into his office? When he agreed to make the run?

Or was it long before then, sixteen years ago, when he applied for the driver’s job in the first place?

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