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Goatman Returns
I have stood on streets in America listening to the pop bang of hand guns and the ratatatat of machine guns and I have been discouraged by the sound of it but not so fearful that I ran inside and hid.
Last night after a day trying to figure out why the light is all wrong in the sky I drove an open jeep type vehicle onto my back porch and heard on the other side of the hedge the rustling in the leaves of scared up deer. I turned the engine off and sat and listened. The sound of heavy hooves over dry leaves continued. It was pitch black. My fear switch clicked on. I had to think fast, my life depended on it. My first instinct was to jump and run but I gathered my wits about me and in a blink or two prioritized my movements. First, I grabbed the unopened Guinness from the drink holder in the jeep's console, and then I jumped and ran. I nearly tore the screen door off its hinges getting to the breezeway but jumpin' jiminycats, this thing coming towards me wasn't going to be held back by some twig-like wood framing and brittle, dry-rotted screen. My heart was pounding as I reached for the door to the house. Would it be locked? I never locked the door. Why would it be locked? Why would I do such a thing, on this day of all days, with the sun off course and all human endeavor teetering on the brink of uncertainty? I put my hand on the knob, and twisted it. It opened. Of course it opened, why wouldn't it, I never locked it.
However, once inside, I did lock it, which proved, which removed any doubt whatsoever, what it was I was dealing with here. The boogeyman had come to visit me up on this hill in Rappahannock.
I would have never guessed when I replaced the back porch flood lamps yesterday that they would become so essentially handy so soon.
I flicked them on, now ready to see the deer, the deer goddammit, not some hooved half human, half goat. Oh crapshit. Goatman. Goatman was here. After nearly twenty years free of him, now he was back. I had forgotten. Not only that, I couldn't remember. Did I anger Goatman that last time in those Texas woods? I vaguely remember a pact. What had I promised? Had I kept my promise? Was he coming to collect something from me? Was this it, my ending, all creepy, and scary, and alone?
About then, Herman, that displaced Brooklyn street cat, whom I adopted, or whom was thrusted or hoisted upon me, came waddling around the corner of the hedge. I had been pretty sure, all along, that it was him. I hadn't really been afraid.
Later that night I awoke screaming, crying out like a little boy as fingers brushed across his face in a dream.