Eulogy

by J.R. Godwin

Rating: M

Disclaimer: "Labyrinth" belongs to Jim Henson & Co. I'm making no money off of this.

THE JOKER: I'm an agent of chaos.

-The Dark Knight (2008)

7.

The crime scene lies catty corner to Saint Patrick's and the Plaza, in a skinny sandstone townhouse whose art deco exterior hasn't changed since the 1920s. Police cruisers block the street to traffic, and journalists shove microphones in our faces as we worm past the police tape.

"Watch these guys," Harry mouths at me.

He's not talking about the journalists. "Who?"

"I know the guys who handle Juvenile Crime here. Brace yourself. It's like talking to those two old fucks on the Muppets."

"Hi, I'm Detective Williams, these are Detectives Rosenfeld, Torres and ... Rex. We're from the 23rd Precinct, heard you've had a kidnapping."

The two grumpy assholes guarding the door don't budge. One of them mutters, "I didn't call you. That was someone else."

Well, well. Screw you, too.

Torres intercepts. "Fellas, this is your crime scene, we get that. We've had two little girls go missing in our precinct in the last month, and both of 'em turned up dead. Right now we're just looking to bring closure to their families, and help bring someone else home. Please help us help these kids, okay?"

The men give us the stink eye, Harry most of all, then step aside grumbling. I get the feeling Harry's had a run in with them before that they're still licking their wounds over. In any case, our small group shoulders its way into a chaotic living room. Several officers have secured the scene, and the CSI folks are walking around with evidence bags.

The parents stick out like sore thumbs. They're a very handsome, very white couple, seated on the sofa with the glazed look that, after a decade on the force, I've come to expect from victims. They're mid-thirties, looks like. He's dressed in slacks and a pressed button down shirt with enough starch to make it stand up on its own. She's wearing a floral dress and pearls. They look like poster children for Barneys New York.

The husband's trying to field questions from the detectives around them, but the wife looks completely numb. I know that feeling.

Harry and Torres make a beeline for the parents while I head for the crime scene, the Goblin King on my heels. I sidestep a CSI person carrying boxes of evidence and suddenly find myself alone in the bedroom.

Bedroom? It's a nursery, with a crib and lacy curtains. The walls are sky blue and adorned with penciled art of Disney characters. My stomach turns to ice. Our latest victim is a baby. I pick a picture frame off the bookshelf and inspect it. It shows the two parents, beaming, holding a chubby baby boy with a rosebud mouth and blond curls.

From behind me, the Goblin King murmurs, "Youngest one yet. His tastes are becoming remarkably perverse, wouldn't you say?"

I don't turn around. I can't take my eyes off a crib mobile, circling idly in the breeze from an open window.

"You're afraid and feeling out of your depth," he adds, almost gleeful.

I startle as if someone lit a fire under my ass and glare at him. "What's your connection with these kids? Huh? Ana Maria, Jennie, Sarah, they all had your book. It mentions you by name-"

"Title," he corrects me, bored. "Few know my name, least of all you."

Now I'm in his face. "Did you kill them? Did you set this thing on them for your own sick amusement?" It takes me a beat to realize I'm almost yelling.

His face shifts again. Now he looks solemn, which surprises me. I didn't think he had a heart at all. "I have so few things in this world that bring me joy. Murdering children is certainly not one of them."

"Then why is your stink all over this case? Just another funny coincidence?"

"Let me turn this question back on you. What will it take to release your claim on Sarah?"

"The fuck did you-"

"Answer me. Don't deny it, you're still thinking about how you can win her back. What would it take for you to forget Sarah: an ungrateful, spoiled, selfish stranger who spreads misery wherever she goes?"

"You're talking about my sister, asshole."

"Your sister," he says, "is dead. She died the night I took her, all those decades ago."

"Sarah saved my life in Afghanistan. And I saw her again just 24 hours ago. She's alive, and she's ... she's just a kid, and she needs her family. Not some sick pervert with a fetish."

"The thing you've seen over the years, the thing you met last night, was nothing more than a shadow, the memory of a dream long since past. Even if I could give her back to you, I wouldn't. I'm not that cruel." He laughs. "No. She's mine, and none shall have her save me."

"What do you mean, you can't give her back? If you're the great and powerful Oz, you can do anything."

"Sarah is no more human than I am. Everything that was human was burned out of her long ago. You have no idea what you're asking."

"I know exactly what I'm asking!" I snap. "You kidnapped my sister and you ... you changed her. She needs to come home."

"Oh, Detective. Sarah is home, though she fights it every day, and constantly sneaks to the world above to spy on you and long for the life that she flushed down the toilet. She fights me, which wounds me to the core. You see, Detective ..." He leans in close. "... Sarah and I are closer now, and more alike, than you can ever guess." His tongue flicks up at the end, lascivious.

I slam him against the wall by his throat. He laughs again, unbothered by my height and strength. "Careful, Detective!" he gasps, more out of amusement than lack of breath. "I'm your only hope of solving this case and saving your city's children. And like you, I'm a man who's lost dearly. Don't you see? We're strange bedfellows, you and I."

"I'll break you in two." And I will. I'll kill him. I don't care about the room full of cops twenty feet away, or the end of my career. Would the judge give me the chair? Still worth it. Still worth it to pop this guy's eyes out of his head. I could break his neck and be out the door in a few seconds. I could make the elevator before anybody found the body. Can you do that to a Goblin King? Would his neck break like a person's?

He's watching my internal debate with a calm self-assurance I find infuriating. "Even if you could kill me, which you can't, eliminating me wouldn't change anything."

"What did you do to my sister?"

"Haven't you been listening? Your sister is dead. What remains is a dream of a dream, an empty shell of a human being." His voice takes on a strange lilt, as if singing a favorite song. "It was her own decision, really."

"Bullshit. Nobody chooses that. Nobody would choose you."

"You think so?" All mocking vanishes. "Then how did I enter the story, hmm? I cannot come in unless I've been asked. Requested. That's how the magic works, and of course, common courtesy. I wouldn't dream of interrupting a life without an explicit invitation."

"Why would Sarah call on you?" I ask, but I don't release my grip. I don't trust anything he says.

A look of pure, unfiltered delight crosses his face. "You truly don't know, do you? Don't know the depths to which your sister could sink? My, my. You've canonized this stranger in your head and worship at her altar, yet you don't know your own god. How tragic, and so very Catholic of you."

I throttle him. Or at least, I try. All of a sudden, it's much harder to hold him, much less squeeze his throat. And then in a flash he's broken free my hold on his neck and twisted my hand so hard that I'm on my knees with a strangled cry. If he adds any more pressure to my wrist, he'll break it. The pain burns fire up my arm and into shoulder.

The Goblin King leans over me. I can hear his voice in my ear, once again the gentle lover. "You observe, Detective, but you do not see. This will be your downfall, in the end."

He releases my hand. I fall to the carpet and curl into a ball, gasping, dazed, confused, and vaguely hear the footsteps of his fancy Armani shoes as they cross the carpet and walk out the door.

It's a few moments before I can find the strength to stand, much less walk. My wrist still hurts, and I can barely use it. The bastard sprained it.

I'm going to kill him.

But first I comb the shelf, flipping one handed through stacks of toys and stuffed animals. It's got to be here. The red book, the ones all the girls received. It must be here, but I don't see it anywhere. Then I look under the crib and in the toy box and behind the changing table.

Nothing.

I stumble out into the living room, still overrun with cops. "Did anybody see a red book?" I ask.

Nobody pays any attention to me.

"HEY!" All movement stops dead. People are looking at me like I cut them off in traffic. "Anybody see a red book? Cloth cover with black tooling. It's important."

Everybody looks at each other. There's a few shrugs, some shakes of the head. The CSI people look confused. They don't know what I'm talking about.

Harry sidles up next to me, alarmed at the way I cradle myself. "Toby, you okay? What's with your hand?"

"It's nothing." I'm glaring at the Goblin King. He stares at me from across the room, hands in his pockets, unseen to the mass of people who swirl around him. He looks unbearably smug. "Harry, there's no book. If this kid was snatched by the Boogeyman, he should have had a book."

"Parents said they put the boy to bed and woke up to find him missing, same as all the others," Torres says. "Everything matches."

"Except the victim," I insist. "The Boogeyman targets underprivileged girls who won't be noticed by the media, and then he goes after a white baby boy in one of the richest areas of the city. Why'd he change now?"

"Maybe he got bored," Harry suggests.

I shake my head. "This one doesn't get bored. He likes the familiar. It comforts him. He wouldn't change his routine unless there was a reason."

The husband is out in the hall talking with detectives, but the wife hasn't left the couch. She still looks dazed, holding a full cup of coffee without drinking any of it. I have to speak to her multiple times before she blinks and looks up.

"Mrs. Fisher, can we speak with you?" I ask very, very gently. I'm a parent. I can't imagine what she's going through right now.

She nods like a puppet on a string. Jerky. Torres and I take seats in the chairs opposite her. We decided that it'd be helpful having another woman question the mother.

"Mrs. Fisher," Torres begins, "I'm so sorry for what you're going through. I know you've already spoken with Detective Hazuri's team. We'd like to ask you a few questions."

There's that nod again, like she's here but not completely present. A lump appears in my throat.

"Mrs. Fisher," Torres continues, "when did you notice your son missing?"

"Breakfast time," she murmurs. "I was in the kitchen, and I realized I hadn't heard him cry since I got up. He always cries. He's a fussy baby."

"Did he have a red book?" I jump in, ignoring the glare from Torres.

The woman frowns. "Red ...? A red book?"

"Yeah. Red cloth cover." I pull an evidence bag from the inside of my coat and hold it out to her. It's Sarah's book, encased in plastic. "Like this one."

Mrs. Fisher stares at it, then shakes her head. "No, we ... we don't have anything like that. We're not a big reading family."

Satisfied? I can see the question all over Torres' face. I tuck the book back into my coat and nod in grim disappointment. "Thanks for your time, Mrs. Fisher."

We stand to go, but she cries out, "They don't think they're going to find him, do they? They think he's dead already, that it was that ... that Boogeyman. You ... you're not giving up that easy, right? Tobias must be so scared. Oh, my God."

I freeze. Stock still. Like a statue. I turn back to stare at the mother. "What did you say?"

The dam has broken, and now she's sobbing hysterically. "He must be terrified! He's never been away from me longer than a few hours before, and now some lunatic's got him!"

"Toby," Torres says in warning.

But I'm too far gone at this point. "You called him Tobias. Your baby's name is Tobias?" I sound angry and frantic to my own ears.

"Y-yes," the mother gulps. "Tobias Michael Fisher. Toby. He's only six-months old. You'll find him, won't you? Won't you?"

I storm out of the apartment, white faced and tight lipped, Torres and Harry on my heels. We push back again through the crowd of journalists. I'm unsurprised to find the Goblin King waiting for me on the sidewalk. He falls in line at my side. The journalists appear to be completely oblivious to his presence; they constantly yell out to me but not to him.

"You have questions." He speaks so softly, yet his voice is like a thunderbolt over the din of the media animal house around us.

I stare at him, wild eyed and short of breath. "What's going on?"

"A forced change in perspective," he responds dryly. "Never a comfortable thing. Ditch your comrades. Walk with me."

I should tell him to get fucked. I should draw my pistol and shoot him while I have the chance. Instead I hiss at my squad mates, "Rex and I are gonna take a walk. I'll see you back at the station."

Harry and Torres shrug and keep walking, and then I know something's up. The Goblin King's working his magical mumbo-jumbo or something. I've worked with Harry eight years. No way he'd ever split from me that easily, not after the intense scene upstairs.

His Majesty links arms with me and guides me down the sidewalk. The journalists don't follow. I glare daggers at him. "What did you do?"

"Nothing," he replies innocently. "Well. Perhaps I helped things along a little bit, but I did nothing against anyone's wishes, strictly speaking. People always need to invite me in, don't you remember? I suggested to your friends, on a very subliminal level, that they have something very important to do elsewhere. That's all."

I'm nervous, walking arm in arm with him like this. The guy just sprained my wrist, and people are gonna think we're an item or something. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I don't think there's anything flirtatious about the Goblin King guiding me down the the street by the arm. No, not at all. He wants to show his dominance over me.

"Most people would be thrilled to be seen with me," His Majesty says, correctly interpreting my discomfort. "You and Sarah share the unique habit of hating my guts. I try not to take that to heart."

"I didn't know you had one."

He laughs. It's a very cold laugh that shoots electricity down my legs and makes the hair on my body stand on end. "Funny. Take a ride with me."

I cock my head at him, confused.

Then a black 4-door Sedan rumbles up to the curb. It has tinted windows. Very flashy. While I freeze in surprise, the Goblin King disengages from me and pops the door open. There's no one in the driver's seat. The car is running itself.

His Majesty ignores my shock and smiles. "After you, Toby. We have much to see."

"How is your wrist?"

I'm bundled into the back of the car, partly in shock. The question makes my hand throb anew. "Better," I lie through my teeth. I'll be damned if I give him any satisfaction.

The Goblin King chuckles in the seat next to me. "You're a liar," he says in a jovial way. "And a very bad one at that."

"I guess it takes a good liar to recognize a bad one."

"Tsk. Truth is so hazy. It exists more on the swing of a pendulum than absolutes." He leans against the window and inspects me, thoughtful. "Have you given any thought to our earlier conversation, and my offer?"

My hand throbs worse. I'm a lefty. Figures he'd know to injure my dominant hand. "What offer?"

"What would it take for you to forget Sarah?"

"Fuck you."

"Don't tempt me. I'm making a very generous offer. What if you could forget Sarah - and with it, all the pain she's caused you? What if you could turn back time and be an only child in a world where life is normal, and without so much loss?" He waits a beat while this sinks in. "If a tragedy never happens, do you relive the same story?"

I stare at him for a very long time.

The driverless car signals left and turns at an intersection. I don't know where we're going, but we're heading into the Lincoln Tunnel. Within moments, we're inside the Tunnel and the interior of the car goes a little dark. It's still easy to see, though, with the underground lights whizzing by the windows.

"You don't know what to say," His Majesty finally says in a sympathetic tone. "Understood. It's not an offer that comes along every day, which is why it's all the more important that you listen carefully to what I'm giving you. It's the opportunity for a better life, the one that was stolen from you when Sarah disappeared."

"You can't change the past," I answer in a strangled tone.

The Goblin King smiles like a wolf. "Do you really think a being as powerful as me would have any trouble rearranging time? Do you think I haven't done so already?"

I'm silent again. I don't know what to say.

"Let's sweeten the deal," he continues. "Let us say that you lose a sister - a wretched sister who has caused you nothing but heartache and misery, I might add - and gain back a beloved wife."

I can't breathe.

"You still don't believe me," His Majesty says. "I've met cynics in my day but you really take the cake."

I finally find my voice. "That's impossible. Nobody can bring back the dead."

"I can make it so that she never died. Cassie, I mean. As for Sarah, well, the only reason your family grieves Sarah is memory. If the world can't remember something, does it still exist?"

"Why are you doing this?"

The Goblin King inspects me. "We are family, you and I. Brothers. I'm offering you a dowry. A bride for a bride."

"She's fifteen, you sick-"

"She's fifty," he replies with deadly calm. "Don't be dissuaded by appearances. Sarah has had half a century to grow up, and she did, I assure you. Her mind is keener than any mortal adult's. She learned her deviousness from the best, as I've told you, and she's no longer human. I shared with her my powers, and she ran with them, twisted them to her own ends, made them a sight to behold. In all the world, there is none like her. She is truly my match in every way. I shudder to think what she'll be like a thousand years from now, when she's grown into her power."

Strangely enough, this thought seems to excite rather than worry him.

"If you think I'm going to sell my sister out to some pervert, you're even more deluded than I thought," I hiss at him.

The Goblin King has gone back to staring idly out the window. We're out of the Tunnel now and passing somewhere through New Jersey. "Who's selling anyone? I'm talking about relinquishing an old claim. Hardly the same thing."

"How?"

"Sarah is part of my world now. The only thing drawing her back here is her relationship with you. Have you never guessed? You're a ghost to her and she to you, and yet this last lingering memory of her mortal life causes her unbearable pain. It draws her back to this world again and again, like a moth to a flame. The best way for all involved to move on is to cut the cord. Free her, Detective."

"And give up on her?"

"It's not abandonment," the Goblin King says firmly. "It's a burial. A final eulogy for the dead. Let her go, Detective. Let her stay with me, and free the both of you."

"God, you're sick."

He chuckles. "You'll think differently, in time."

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

We drive for another forty minutes. The concrete landscape fades away. Jersey City and Fort Lee turn into the rolling forest hills of Nanuet, past the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River north of New York City. I see a lot of bicyclists on the road, enjoying the last warm days of autumn, and children getting off school buses.

This part of New England is picturesque, something out of a Washington Irving tale. You see a lot of old colonial houses and fishing boats in this area.

"What are we doing here?" I whisper against the glass. Dread buzzes in my ear like an evil black fly.

"We're going home, Detective."

The car pulls up to a familiar house. I just saw it last week when I took Lucia to visit Dad. The headless Barbies haven't moved from their spot on the lawn, and the kid's tricycle remains forgotten by the shrubs.

It's my childhood home.

"Once upon a time, I met a human who I respected very much," the Goblin King murmurs. "Another king, in a land far from here. He bound me and my kind and bade us build a temple to his god. Normally a human foolish enough to bind me, well, I'd end him and his entire line. But he was the wisest mortal I ever met. I couldn't even be angry with him. It was a great surprise to me. I'd long thought of your race the same way you think of bunions: beneath your notice, until one irritates you and you're forced to remove the problem. No, I liked him, even though he humiliated me and forced me into servitude. I was glad when he died and I was again free, but I missed his spark."

"Does this story have a purpose, or do you just like reminiscing about your glory days?"

He blinks himself back into the car. I have a feeling he was, for just a moment, millions of miles away, lost in another time. "Sarah is not that king. He was too good. But she's very close in terms of adversity and smarts. I've missed that sort of challenge. You won't. You deserve a happy life, and a peaceful one." He nods at the door handle.

Uncertain, I let us out and step outside, the Goblin King on my heels. I don't hesitate but walk up to the porch.

The place hasn't been renovated as well as I'd originally thought, the other day. There's still some work needed on the shutters, and there's tape over a window.

"The family that lives here now ..."

"Gone," His Majesty says. "An emergency in San Francisco. They've been gone for weeks and haven't been back. I don't know if they ever will, after today. Why don't you try the door? It's unlocked."

It is. I twist the handle easily.

The foyer looks the same as it did the last time I was home, at an age when most kids were going to college. For me, it was after my first deployment. I'd gone to Iraq. Rodriguez and I were nineteen and very stupid. We'd originally been a trio, but Seaver had died from a sniper's bullet in Baghdad, and then we were two. And then there was that fateful day in Kabul when we became one.

The furniture's different, and somebody changed out the floor tile. It doesn't look very nice, as if someone was working from a Martha Stewart magazine and then ran out of ideas.

"Upstairs," the Goblin King hisses, impatient. The front door's closed behind us now, yet his hair moves in an unseen, unfelt breeze. His eyes, translucent in this light, glow faintly.

The stairs shriek under my heels. I'm back in my old nightmare again, climbing the staircase in the Taylor House. I refuse to look behind me, try to see if Eddie Pannacchio is waiting for me through the porch window outside, waiting to goad me on.

The top of the stairs come too fast. All the doors on this floor are shut. It's dark with no outside light.

This doesn't deter the Goblin King. "What do you think, Detective? Door one, two, or three? Pick a door and win a prize."

Something smells rank, as if nobody's aired the place out in weeks. How long does it take for a house to smell bad? "I think animals got in. Something reeks."

"Pick a door, Detective," he insists. Something's changed. He sounds more menacing than usual.

Mom and Dad slept in the room at the end of the hall. The bathroom was there, next to the linen closet. That door (next to the wall where our parents hung Sarah's school photo) led to my room. And that door there, right next to the stairs ... Sarah's room. The one place I was forbidden to go.

So of course I choose that door first.

Light strikes, makes my eyes hurt as I open the door. There shouldn't be any light on in this place. No one's been home in weeks. The furniture's different here, too, but the wall mirror's the same from when Sarah lived here, and the current occupants haven't changed the wallpaper.

The smell hits me like a noxious cloud. As I walk through the door, I clap my good hand over my nose and try not to gag. What the hell is that smell?

And then I spy the figure sitting on the floor with her back to me. I instantly recognize that long black hair, even before she turns around in surprise and fear, even before I register those coal black eyes and that strange, inhuman face I once chased in Afghanistan. It's bone white splashed with blood, along with the hands, which she frantically tries to hide. "No!" she shrieks. "Not you!"

Sarah.