For Elise

by Garrett K. Jones

My grandmother told me about the Grinsender Kobold... how it snatched children from their parents’ homes after using its innocent guise to hunt the ones so easily taken.

My parents took my sister and I to the circus, hoping to help us cheer up a year after the war - the War - ended. I was six, almost seven. I remember being enthralled with the idea of seeing lions and tigers because they were creatures of wonder, as mysterious as those Oma told me about when I was smaller.

I always hated her stories because they were terrifying. Most faery tales are happy, full of frivolity. Not Oma’s.

As we approached the waiting tent on that rainy night, I paused and stared at the storm drain just thirty feet away. I didn’t know why, but I sensed something unnerving radiating from that dark, narrow opening. Something lurking... watching... waiting.

“Hey,” my father said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “You alright, son?”

“Yeah, pop,” I replied.

I looked up at him, staring into his eyes. They were world-weary, glazed over from the time he spent in France. But he’s home now. He survived the freezing, famine-ridden trenches and everything that came with those horrors. A part of him didn’t come home, but most of him did.

I hugged him. Tightly.

“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go enjoy the show.”

I followed him and we ran to catch up to mom, who held my sister in her arms as she waited for us.

We arrived early enough to get front row seats. This hadn’t just been my very first circus, it was also my little sister’s first circus. The parade of animals coming through the tent absolutely amazed her; she especially loved the horses wearing sequined halters and saddles, their riders performing acrobatic feats. She grew even more excited when the elephants entered the ring to perform a variety of tricks in synchronous coordination. While I was mesmerized by the big cats and their tamers, she was scared the moment they opened their toothy mouths and bellowed their fierce roars.

I didn’t know why the lion was called the king of the jungle, because they aren’t nearly as big as tigers.

The death-defying high wire performers were the closing act, but the ring master introduced a troupe of clowns to entertain the crowd while the stagehands helped the daredevils set up the rigging for the trapeze, tightrope, and the safety nets. The first few clowns made everyone laugh with their mostly silent slapstick. Cream pies to the face followed by getting sprayed with bottles of seltzer water are always a crowd pleaser.

I counted a total of eight clowns in the troupe, studying their ridiculous costumes. Each wore some form of oversized clothing disguising how tall or how strong or how graceful the performers were in real life. Their make-up consisted of white face paint touched up with varying shades of reds, blues, oranges, and greens and they marked themselves with differing patterns. No one clown wore the same face.

I gleefully watched as, one by one, each of the clowns approached the people sitting in the front of the audience. They eventually made their way towards where my family sat, getting right into our faces. A gaggle of grinning visages rushed in comical movements; they moved so fast and approached so frequently, reminding me of the time I found the massive wasp’s nest out in the woods near my parent’s house.

The rotted tree branch holding the nest dropped to the forest floor, right near where my father and I explored. It detonated into a buzzing swarm of anger and violence. I never saw him so scared... he collapsed to the ground and screamed for me to run away, but I couldn’t and ended up getting stung nearly a dozen times before he came to his senses and carried me home.

The memory made me flinch as the painted smiles kept getting closer and closer. Each forced expression of mirth loomed uncomfortably close, forming a repeated jumble of faces approaching over and over and over again until a new face appeared from the center of the group. I hadn’t seen this one before... or maybe I missed it and lost the performer in the mix.

Blood red lips curved into a wicked grin. Green markings covered the white base over his eyes and earlobes. Shaggy mouse gray hair hung in clumps over its head, dangling into a face so terrifying I wanted to get up from my seat and move as far from it as I could.

This one kept getting too close, equally crimson eyes staring fixedly on mine. That same unnerving distraction I experienced when I looked at the storm drain outside froze me in place. The world - the other clowns, the ring master, the lights, the band, and the crowd - all seemed to disappear as if there was nothing else in the tent except for me and this kobold as my Oma would call him.

I didn’t even notice when he crossed over the metal railing and reached out for me where I sat between my parents, my sister sitting on my mom’s lap. My sister’s fearful scream, and dad shouting, “Hey,” finally shook the cobwebs from my head and I remembered where I was.

“What the hell are ya doin’?” my father shouted at the clown.

The clown didn’t say a word; it merely grunted - or had it growled - in response.

“C’mon,” my father said. “I think we’ve had enough of the circus for one night.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. Rain usually soothes me, but not that night. Not ever again. It took me years to better understand why, to put a name to what prevented me from relaxing and getting the rest I needed, but I realized the clown from the circus haunted me.

It still haunts me now.

My parents owned the grandfather clock my Opa built when he was younger than my father; it ran so well, my father wound his own pocket watch by it. It chimed every hour on the hour, waking me up in the middle of the night every time it struck midnight.

My parents put me to bed at eight that evening, but after three sets of chimes waking me up, I woke a fourth time, but not because I heard the twelve tolls of the clock’s internal bells. The creaking of my closet door forced me to sit up in bed, my pulse racing. I stared at the door, hidden in the hard shadows cast by the dim oil lamp sitting on my bedside table. I rubbed my eyes, clearing the gunk from their corners when I heard the door creak again. I couldn’t tell at first, but it looked like it slowly swung open.

I reached for the lamp’s knob, adding more light to the room as the creaking sounded again.

I anxiously climbed out of bed and walked over to the closet door. I studied it, noticing how ajar it looked. I pulled the door open just a bit, finding my dress clothes hanging alongside my winter coat. My parents stored a small box of items in the bottom corner, but it remained otherwise empty.

I closed the door and returned to bed. I settled in, pulling the blanket up to my neck. The lamp’s dull warmth radiating against my face faded, leaving me in pure darkness.

But then the metallic scratch of the closet doorknob twisted in my ears and the wooden creak echoed for a fourth time, forcing me to sit up and stare at the door again.

I got up and quickly crossed a third of the room. I reached for the knob; the second my hand touched cold brass, the door burst to splinters as a singular grinning visage pinned me to the floor and loomed over me. Its toothy smile beamed, its fangs dripping with viscous saliva from within a blood-rimmed mouth. Its equally burning eyes bore into mine and its moppy, stringy pate dissolved to reveal a set of ridges and horns like the depictions of dybbuk Oma once claimed to see.

A sickly green hue tinged the skin as the face pressed closer to mine, the thin nose snorting and sniffing as it inhaled my terrified scent.

“Ich konnte dich vorher nicht erreichen, aber es macht dir nichts aus, nein,” it said in a horrible grating voice.

I struggled, trying to fight it off as it dragged a long claw across my chest, scratching a mark into my skin. It took every effort to get my feet planted between its scaly stomach and my body; I kicked out but couldn’t do much against the beast’s sheer weight.

The thing holding me down cackled menacingly, stopping only when something unexpected happened. My bedroom door opened.

I looked up, hoping my father - my hero - stood in the doorway, ready to do battle with this monster. But it wasn’t him.

“Hen-wee,” she cooed, unable to pronounce her R’s. “I had a bad-”

“Elise,” I gasped.

“Nein... du wirst mich noch besser befriedigen,” the creature hissed.

It planted a scraping kick into my ribs as it lunged for my sister.

I tried to stop it from getting to her, but I was too slow. It snatched her and bounded down the hallway, crashing through the window in the front room and out into the pouring rain.

The rain pours just like it did on the night my life changed forever. It’s been twenty-one years. To the night.

But the location isn’t the same.

Before, I was hunted inside my bedroom at my parents’ house. It was the one place where I should have been safe. Where my sister should have been safe. I expected it to return, to barrel through my closet door and steal me away from my parents just like it did Elise.

“It’s real,” I remember overhearing my father say to my mother; she apparently refused to accept her mother-in-law’s warnings about the creature hunting our family for generations.

It never returned and my family was never the same. My mother needed to be hospitalized, unable to withstand the broken heart left in the wake of my sister’s abduction. My father suffered a broken heart too, but he withdrew into a bottle instead of into himself.

Me?

As soon as I was old enough, I traveled on my own to my Oma and Opa’s homeland, following the clues from Oma’s stories and the kobold tales of ancient folklore. I grew obsessed, learning its patterns, its behaviors until it brought me to this abandoned mine outside Erfurt.

The folklore claims creatures like the kobold were once faeries corrupted by dark magic and prefer hiding underground, specifically in caves.

The mine at the back of a massive quarry yawns like the storm drain from my childhood, but instead of me cowering at the dark doorway, I stalk towards it as I ignore the pelting rain.

“Geh oder ich fresse dich,” I hear it hiss as I step inside.

“Du machst mir keine angst, Biest!”

The kobold remains silent as I move deeper into the mine. I know it senses me, its large ears catching every scrape of my boots on the stone floor. Its fiery eyes stare at me; I can’t see it in the inky blackness except for those bloody, burning irises.

“You speak my language,” a gravely voice echoes from the shadows. “I can speak yours, mein Freund.”

A flash of lightning casts the tunnel in an arc of blinding white. I see the crimson grin flare against the kobold’s sickly green face, sending a flash of memory of it pinning me to my bedroom floor through my mind. There is a hint of another emotion behind the grinning facade.

“I wasn’t there to kill you,” it says, its heavily accented English as harsh as the rock surrounding us. “I was there to collect you.”

“Why?”

“A generational feud. I did the same to your Oma’s sister. And her mother’s brother. I tried collecting your father. I sensed him when he came to this land, but he was too old when I came for him. So I followed him and waited.”

“For what?”

“For you.”

“Here I am. Alone in the dark just like I was when you broke into my home.”

“And now you break into mine?”

I stoop to match its crouched, contorted height. We are eye-to-eye now, staring at each other, only a foot separating us.

I realize the emotion it hides from me. It’s fear. The damned thing is frightened... terrified even... of what? Me? Why?

I think back to all of the stories Oma told about the kobold. It attacked children, the weak and helpless and defenseless. It avoided going after my father because he was an adult. I instantly remember something my father taught me when older boys beat me up at school: the weak prey on the weaker.

I realize the kobold is nothing more than a...

“Coward,” I say.

“What did you call me?!?”

“Du bist ein Feigling,” I say in German.

“Don’t,” it barks.

The sound travels like an explosion through the mine.

“You think I’m scared of you,” I challenge.

“Just like you were twenty-one years ago,” it says. “Just like when you were a child.”

It’s goading me, trying to distract me and get me off balance.

“Yes,” it hisses, elongating the single word. “Just like when you were a child... just like... Elise.”

Another crack of lightning brightens the space and my fist flies forward, catching the kobold in its snout. It shrieks in pain and snarls back at me, its face pressing as close to mine as on that night.

“Leave and don’t come back,” it demands, turning away.

“No.”

It faces me again, its eyes studying me.

“No?”

“Because I’m not the one who’s afraid. I see it in your eyes. You can’t do anything to me, because I’m not a child any longer.”

“I said don’t.”

The warning is hollow, but I see it tense the slender talons on its fingertips.

“You won’t hurt me because you’re a coward.”

“I said don’t!!!”

It moves with blinding speed just as it had before. It lunges at me and I barely have enough time to react. It’s not as big as it was before; it towered over me then, but I’m taller now. It’s more comfortable in the enclosed space than I am, using the mine to its advantage as it tackles me and tries to claw my face.

I kick it off of me, my legs stronger than they were then. The force of my defense sends it careening off me and into the diagonal shaft leading deeper into the mine. Its screeches fade the farther it falls, but I don’t give it respite; I follow it down.

The drop to the bottom is quick. It’s too dark to see so I turn on the flashlight I brought with me. Craggy grooves carve canyons along the rock walls but here and there I catch shining glints of raw ore left over when the workers abandoned the site.

“Bleib... bleib zurück,” the kobold says, its tone pleading.

I see a cut on its shoulder, the edges of the wound sizzling.

A smile spreads across my face, one I hope is as menacing as the expression the kobold wore when it first attacked me back in America.

“You’re not just a coward, you’re a fool,” I say.

“Was? Was meinst du?”

It wants to know what I mean.

“The mine... it’s filled with iron.”

Its eyes widen as it glances around at our subterranean surroundings.

“Ich werde dich töten,” the kobold growls, but I know it’s just as hollow as its warning up above.

“No,” I say, picking up a loose metallic shard. “No, you won’t.”

The kobold launches itself bodily at me again, but I catch it across the palm of its hand with the shard. The wound immediately burns its flesh away. Its new posture belies its true cowardice as it backs towards a far wall.

I kick the kobold in the chest, knocking it back against the stone and forcing it to the ground. I kneel on top of it, pinning it as it once pinned me. I hold the shard for it to see. I consider destroying this beast, this once grinning goblin haunting my family line. But it wouldn’t be enough.

“Bitte... bitte nicht.”

“Nein,” I say. “Sag ihren Namen.”

I lean in, dragging the shard’s edge across the kobold’s chest and face.

“Eh,” it shrieks. “Eh... lees...”

I use the shard to help anchor my climb out of the mine shaft, and I make it out with only a few scratches and bruises from the scuffle to keep the kobold pinned to the ground. The rain ceases, leaving a bright, clear day ahead.

I make the trek back to Erfurt, seeing the banners and bunting as I approach the city limits, the fabric as crimson as the smile I removed from the kobold’s face.

I realize just how badly I need to return home. Germany isn’t safe for an American with the last name of Aarons.