"Coyne, John - Hobgoblin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Coyne John)

Hobgoblin by John Coyne
Copyright 1981


hob-gob-lin (hob/gob/lin), N. 1. anything causing superstitious fear; a bogy. 2. an evil spirit. 3. a fantasy war game based on Irish mythologyand folklore, played with dice and a deck of cards.


One

Christmas, 1980
Barbara Gardiner swung the family station wagon off the avenue and into the cul-de-sac. As always, she immediately felt safe. She was home.
It had snowed earlier in the day and a few inches of heavy wet snow clung to the bare branches and wooden fences. A perfect Connecticut Christmas card, she thought, with the houses laced in Colored lights and children building snowmen on their front lawns.
Barbara slowed, drove carefully on the icy street. The children were everywhere, dark figures slipping out from behind parked cars, running from lot to lot. They were like characters from Scott's fantasy game, she thought, all elves and goblins.

"You find yourself in an enchanted forest, Brian Boru, lost somewhere in time." The Dealer paused to shuffle the deck of blue Hobgoblin cards. Scott glanced quickly at the other four players circled around the dormitory rec-room table, and then down at the Battleboard where the miniature figure of Brian Boru waited for the next round.
Scott had painted the one-inch-tall lead figure himself. Whenever he played Hobgoblin Brian Boru was his character, a twenty-fifth level paladin whom Scott had kept alive through dozens of adventures in the ancient land of Erin.
"Pick a card, Brian," the Dealer instructed, spreading the blue deck out on the table.
Scott tensed. The start of a new Hobgoblin game always made him nervous. So much depended on the card selected, so much of Brian Boru's fate depended on chance.
"Hurry up, Gardiner, for chrissake," one of the other boys demanded. "We have less than an hour to play."
Scott glanced up at the wall clock at the end of the lounge. Twenty to five. At five-thirty they had PE and then dinner. They wouldn't be able to play again until eight o'clock, after study hall.
There were other activities in progress around the rec-room; students playing Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller and Runequest fantasy war games, but most of the boys had Hobgoblin cards on the table and were running an Adventure.
Scott smiled. It made him feel good knowing that he had introduced Hobgoblin to Spencertown Academy, knowing too that his classmates at the prep school considered him the best player and his Brian Boru unbeatable.

Barbara had a moment of concern thinking of Scott. He would be home within the week and she still hadn't found him the right Christmas present. Perhaps, she thought, she should go into the city on Friday and find him something at the hobby shop. A new game perhaps. Something more realistic than Hobgoblin, she thought, less megalomaniacal, less devoted to vicarious slaughter.
Then she saw her husband's MGB parked in their driveway and she swung in behind it, wondering why he was home from work so early, and she forgot about her son.

"All right, Brian, draw the first card," Mr. Speier, the Dealer, instructed. Scott inhaled deeply. On the exhale, he reached out and impulsively pulled a blue card from the deck.
He did not look down at the card. It was a superstition with Scott. He thought it would bring bad luck to Brian Boru. He waited until Mr. Speier dealt the other players their game cards. McNulty's monk/dwarf, Saint Finn, was entrapped in a "labyrinth in the land south of the mountains of Connaught." Rob Evans's banshee, Boobach, had been sent on a fool's errand to the Isle of Skye, and Rick Wenzel's troll, Billy Blind, still guarded the pot of gold at the bottom of the lake called Lough Neagh.
"Here," explained Mr. Speier, reading from the Hobgoblin Dealer's Manual, "at Lough Neagh can be seen-if you have the gift of fairy vision to see under water-columns and walls of a beautiful palace where once inhabited a fairy race that some called the gods of earth.
"Now below these waters when the full moon is shining, it is said that boatmen, coming home late at night, can hear music rising from beneath the waves, hear laughter, and see glimmering lights far down under the sea.
"Your Adventure," the Dealer said, glancing at Scott, Evans and McNulty, "is to find your own way out of your present situations, then rendezvous on the marshy shores of Lough Neagh and locate Billy Blind in the underwater palace. If you can free him from this fairy race of gods, you may divide their gold among you." Mr. Speier closed the Hobgoblin guide and added carefully, "Should any of you happen to survive."
Scott edged forward in the chair, eager to begin. He loved the way Mr. Speier dealt the game, built up the story. Of all the teachers at Spencertown Academy who played Hobgoblin, Mr. Speier was the best Dealer. He was always able to create another world, to help Scott let his imagination roam.
"Everyone ready?" Mr. Speier asked. He glanced at the four teenagers circling the table. "All right, let's begin."

"Warren?" Barbara Gardiner unlocked the front door and stepped into the foyer. In her arms she carried several Christmas packages which she dropped on the sofa as she quickly crossed the room. Where was he? What was wrong?
"Barbara...?" His loud voice carried clearly through the house. "I'm out here."
Barbara sighed. "Thank God," she whispered, and followed his voice into the kitchen.
"Why are you home, honey? It's not even five o'clock."
He was sitting at the breakfast table drinking coffee with the morning Times spread before him. He seemed the same as when he had left for work, except that he had taken off his jacket and tie and rolled up his sleeves, but in the bright fluorescent light of the breakfast nook he looked grayish.
He glanced up from the paper and smiled.
She saw the fatigue in his eyes, the sadness on his face. He was working too hard, she had told him. If owning his own business was going to drive him into the ground, then the business wasn't worth it.
"Are you ail right, Warren?"
"I'm fine." He pushed the sports page away and leaned back in the chair. "I just wasn't feeling so hot and decided not to go back to the office. Where have you been, shopping?" He kept smiling.
She went over and touched his forehead. "You have some fever," she said, and her tension began to subside. "You may be coming down with the flu. It's around. Do you want anything? An aspirin?" She wanted to do something for him, something to ease his discomfort. She hated it when he or Scotty was ill. She felt so helpless.
"No, I'm fine." He stood up, dismissing her concern, and went to the stove to pour another cup of coffee. She followed after him, as if she were afraid to let him get beyond her reach.
For the last few weeks he had not been sleeping well and several times she had awakened to find him reading downstairs, saying he was too uncomfortable to sleep.
"Warren, I think you should see a doctor about this. You haven't been getting any rest. You're not eating at all, just look at yourself. You're losing weight."
She stopped to appraise her husband. He was a big man with the thick neck and forearms of someone who made his living from manual labor, although nowadays he did not. In college he had been a football player and it was his brute strength that had first attracted her.
"I did call the doctor. I'm seeing him tomorrow." Warren stepped away from the stove and turned toward her.
The coffee cup was trembling in his hand. Oh, God, she thought, he really was sick.