Goblin Moon

Goblin Moon

The first full moon of September lies heavily pregnant in the midnight sky. I was walking home from the bus stop six blocks away from my apartment. The moon cast a yellowy orange glow on the neighbourhood, highlighting the sloping roofs of old houses and casting distorted shadows of familiar things. Fallen leaves crackled under my feet and the wind blew through the orphaned branches of dark trees. I could hear the distant chittering of raccoons and the sound of their claws clicking on garbage cans. Only a few lights shone in curtained rooms, I figured the die-hards to be students like myself. Who else would be up past midnight on a cold fall evening.

There is only one part of my walk home I don't like. The alley-way in the middle of my trek was dark, closed in and unwelcoming. As I neared the alley, I could hear the murmuring chirps of sleeping birds in the holly tree standing right before the entrance. With the muted sounds of lazy traffic and latecomers, like myself, behind me I mustered the courage to cross. Eyes straight ahead and legs stretched in a brisk walk I stepped off the sidewalk onto the alley entrance. Halfway across I heard a noise. My head turned before I think not to look. I expected to see the family of raccoons whose chittering I heard earlier. What I saw stopped me in my tracks.

Two old men bent over a garbage can. Fairly common in the city, not so for this area, but not implausible. The moon hung low at their backs. Both were bald, pointed ears sticking out from their pasty heads. The men turned to face me as I walked by. They had narrow, angular faces, heavy brows arched over sunken eyes, and thin grasping hands like the bare branches of trees. They both wore tattered trench coats, the farthest wearing a muddy brown one, the other in pea green. Thin rickety legs on gnarled curly feet stuck out from under bloated bellies. It slowly dawned on me that the old men were essentially naked beneath those trench coats. We stared at each other blankly, until the farest tapped the first on the shoulder, chittering at him. Once they both turned away I was free to move, shaking my head, I picked up my pace, almost running home. As I hurried along I tried to remember why I stopped in the first palce.

It wasn't until I closed and locked the door behind me that I remebered the noise I heard the old man make. It was like the cittering of raccoons, but up close it sounded tantalizingly like language, almost musical. As I got ready for bed an old story my gramma told me drifted through my mind. The story of the Goblin Moon. The Queen of the Goblins came to bless the harvest every year on the eve of the first full moon during harvest time. She was a huge pasty bloated creature who wandered the streets of whichever village, sampling the feasts laid out for her, followed by her minions. If the moon shone a deep yellow that, it meant she was happy with the offerings, and the harvest would be boutiful. If the moon was white, she was offended and the crops would rot. As I fell asleep , safely snug in bed, an image of the old men drifted across my minds eye. Their eyes had been the same color as the moon behind them and the moon was yellow tonight.