Evil Gnomes

Evil Gnomes

Graham Swanson

written 10/21/2021

There lived in the old village of Elkhead a friendly old man rumored to be a wizard able to hold his 

hands over the ground to find ancient bones deep deep deep under the mud where the Great Green 

River flooded long ago. Of all things long rotten in the ground, he possessed an acute sensitivity. He 

stuck his nose into a fistful of dirt and discovered long-dead dinosaurs, mammoths, strange 

monstrosities, even prehistoric humans unmapped by known strands of DNA, and other creatures older 

than them all. Some drunken squatters even gossiped amongst themselves as they hid under canopies to 

avoid the passing storms. They heard his whispers along the river banks. His voice rippled over the 

whirlpools in lost languages. Over the bluffs, he stood with his palms open to the starlight speaking 

revelations to the raw clay compressed over ancient pits.

Visitors to his home often found the old wizard cradling bones too large to belong to anything alive today, and too twisted to fit any known species. He sat alone in his shack lovingly talking to ancient remains as if talking to a beloved pet. Many good folk believed him to be crazy because when he did speak their language, he choose to lecture on and on to them about how the Great Green River once flowed over the hilltops and bluffs.

“Its mighty currents carry the carcasses of unspeakable monsters too beautiful and timid for humans to comprehend from where the sky meets the sea” he sat on a bench exhausted by excitement, both hands trembled on a cane that revved up like an afterburner.  He carved its shaft from monstrous bones he dug up from tar and petrified slag, the head melted and smoothed his own eye. The one eye left peeled in yellow flutters and deepened like someone who hadn't seen the sun in lifetimes. 

A young child who crashed his bike in front of the old wizard's shack said he saw a dozen tiny ugly men pop up from the ground to bring him food from a heavy smoking pot. They wore pointy shoes and silly tall hats. He spoke to them in whispers, then spotted the boy cowering in the reeds. The old wizard finished eating his food by stabbing it with a fork and slurping it up before it squirmed away and leaped from the plate. The little bearded men stood around the table and treasured the sight of the old man eating raw and living slug-like creatures. The little child never saw them in any book or video. When only a hot red soup of crimson remained on the plate, the old man took the boy by the hand and guided him back home. Along the way home the old man spoke of these glorious forgone times with passion and detail as if he experienced them himself.

Every time the old wizard dug his claws into the cracks across the flat mud he spoke the truth. Diggers took shovels to the worms and unearthed exactly what he told them to find laying in subterranean pits. His fame spread far among villages of folk who claim to descend from the bones he loved that even radio towers of the great city emitted impressive regalias of his discoveries. Despite the immense value of the fossils he discovered, he lived in a roofless, three-wall cabin under the river bridge because he needed no money. He lived off silver coins minted in extinct empires and otherwise never worked. He even learned to see things living in the forest that few have the patience or belief to witness.

One night a young college freshman, Aliya Tyson, left the campus of the small college she attended in the Village of Urep. Once the sunset blushed she regretted not bringing a jacket back as dewey grass turned to frost. According to merrymakers at a party watching from the window, she hopped into a tall truck with high wheels lit up by blinding under carraige lights and never made it home. County detectives found footage from the bank of the truck driving back and forth three times in the dead of the night. By morning they found the ice-capped tire tracks melting in the rising sun along the foamy bank.

Detectives had no clues to convict the man, search parties equipped with sonar and helicopters failed to discover her body, so they recruited the old wizard to find the dead body of the college girl that went missing in the Great Green river. He lead them into the swamp pits where hunters like to shoot and masochate deer in the quiet solitude of twilight. He grabbed a handful of mud, stuck his finger into it, then soaked his finger in his mouth until dirty saliva dripped from the corners of his lips. Then he took two handfuls of wet sand and squeezed until it fell like snakes running through his fingers. Then he reached down into the pool until the mud reached his elbow, and he pulled out another heavy fist of spattering bole. He held it into the morning fog drifting along the trees between gasps of sunlight, and pointed to where the autumn leaves glimmered over a fountain of crystal clear water.

The old wizard jumped into the water, ice-cold steam rose up from the waterline at his waist, he dug around rocks and hibernating fish until his fingers turned blue. He ignored the questions of the police and told them about how the dirt tasted in the times of flying whales and little men living in mushrooms higher than any skyscraper on earth. Once the flesh of his arms turned purple and numb he hollered in success. He rinsed his hands off in the water and jumped out. He held the detectives close, and showed them a tiny piece of bone that weighed as much as a thumbnail. Once the tests came back affirmative, the courts sent the man who picked her up to rot in a gibbet kept deep underground.

A historian from the University heard of this strange bone wizard and recruited him to find the skull of the town’s founder so they could put it up in exhibit. They found the body hundreds of miles away buried deep in unmarked desert. The old man spoke to the skull, gave it childlike nicknames, and the historian took note of how he kept claiming again and again that the town founder didn’t descend from apemen, but from a race of winged beetles that crawled out from the Great Green River once it receded from the bleeding bluffs, and narrowed to the sewage blackened course we all know today. The historian was a modern thinker and a man of science. He doubted the wizard's groove, but the wizard reasoned thus:  

"Biped apes descended from the darling turtle you called Tiktaalik. Man descends from apes. Why not the apes born from cats, rodents, or cockroaches?"

The bone wizard never owned a car, and seldom-used roads. He took the ancient pathways only known to the faces in the moon. On foot, he reached any place in about five minutes. Sports cars raced him on the highway from the flooded swamps on the other side of the river but he always finished first. It became common happenstance to get up in the middle of the night to drink water or take the dog outside and find him in the streetlight trudging out of some bushes and into the gloomy murk hanging over the river.

Some nightshift workers dredging the carnage swamp from the meat plant even looked up at the night sky frozen still under sparkling stars and thought they saw him walking in the air trembling on his wild cane. If anyone asked him about the sighting, he’d recall the past honor of mammoths walking in the sky to the sound of thunder. Rags fell from his starbound shoulders and blew around the smoking corners of town. The handcarved cane became an item of immense curiosity. The old man never let it leave his sight.

German Shepards bowed to the old wizard as he walked through yards and freshly plowed fields. Hunters in the pale forests fired at him only for the cascading rounds to pass through his clothes strike the dirt behind him. No one saw him eat at the food parlors, or bleed at the hospitals. Drunks offered him their best alcohol and local musicians offered him cannabis, but he only laughed at them as he lived on a supply of clear magic rocks he cooked himself. Even vans speeding past red lights did him no harm when they caught him in the headlights.

Not everyone carried the legend of the strange old wizard of the forest where the river once drained. Those serving time in prison, fighting in far off wars, or constantly travelling from crack house to crack house never took time to listen to such legends. To them he seemed just another eccentric rambler robbed of his white sheets of stolen memory. Others attempted to spy on him to learn the secrets of his wealth, and to burglarize his home while he was away. They found nothing but tiny jars full of bones, and writings about the strange little people that lurked in the trees who have been living there long since man evolved to stand up on two legs.

A former methhead, Cream, got in his truck and drove to the brickhouse where his family sat around waiting. Grandma Linder just died, and they didn’t know that their kin agreed long ago to let the strange old man keep passing by. His sister grew up here as much as he did, so she argued with him over ownership of the house. Grandma left the house neglected and dilapidated by the time she died, but everyone saw the work and updates that Cream toiled over since he quit his addiction and found work. The toilets flushed water again, sutures taped shut cracks in the walls, the sinks no longer poured gas, he caulked cabinets falling from the walls, and he even cleaned the soiled couches and heaps of crap out the basement. Under all the rotten boxes he found a hatch. Thick steel latches sealed it shut.

Cream used a torch to cut off the bolts and melt the bindings. Once he lifted the hatch he found a sub basement full of ordinary old man garbage. He shut the hatch again and assumed it all belonged to his late grandfather Linder, that his grandmother chose to hide it away in the subbasement. It never struck him as odd that the subbasement seemed larger and older than the main basement, and if he had gone inside to investigate he would’ve found fossils of tiny evil men who once served as slaves to the master creatures who devoured the mammoths. If he dug even deeper, he would've found vents of air built by the tiny men, and heard their hexes from deep within the earth.

Two large guard dogs scratched at the dirt under the picture window until Shawnice Linder, Cream’s sister, called them over the porch. They dug their claws in and growled at gaps between the ground and the foundation. They snarled with fresh blood on their teeth and snouts. Shawnice stepped down to the grass to grab them but she stopped to utter a scream so stiff that she broke out in a fit of coughing. Bits of carnage floated in the bird bath. Tiny ankles without feet, gnarled organs of green and purple bobbed amid soiled clothes, bits of hair and skull bounced at the top of reddened mash. “The dogs found moles or something.” Shawnice called to Cream as he came rushing outside.

At once Cream recognized the tatters of wool soaking over a small ribcage, the pink carnage dripping to the grass, a crow landed and tried to pick out the pointed ear. He shewed the bird away and picked it out of the bath. The guard dogs leapt into the air and landed hard on cracks in the ground. They stuck their noses into the holes they found and barked down. Shawnice pulled them away and shut them inside as rain clouds obscured the sun and thunderstorms strolled in the distance. A child's bike lay upside down in the grass facing the trees. 

“I’ll come back for the house party. Take care of my dogs.” Shawnice said to him before she left to catch a flight. 

That night as Cream slept he heard a woosh of wind and a tap on the window. He got up, slammed a glass of water, and fought the temptation to reach into his sports bag. Instead he merely unzipped, and looked upon the treasured bags of crystal inside with the smoke stained pipe. He hurled it into his closet, and went outside to find the source of the noise. From the window he saw the ragged coats of the old wizard blow through the moonlight.

The old man fished the bones from the bird bath, held them into the silver moonlight, delicately cleaned them with Clorox wipes and added them to a silk bag strapped to his cane. Cream stood in the dark on the porch with the front door swinging open in the wind. Cold gusts hurled wet leaves down from the roof. The cane firmly planted vibrated in the ground. Animal whispers poured from the trees.

Cream wanted to cuss at the old man, but behind him he noticed sulking in the dark a dozen or more tiny heads and eyes shining from the mist rising from the soggy earth. The two dogs leapt from the terrace to the mist and lunged into the dark curtains of vapor. The whispers and sparkling eyes scattered into the leafless trees beyond the muddy ditches as the dog’s barks dissipated in the wash of midnight gardens. Cream stepped backwards into his home and latched the door shut. Out the window the old man continued reaching into the bird bath.

The gun in the closet felt heavy in his arms but Cream fell asleep in the corner of his closet before he took the chance of discharging it. By sunrise the dog’s food bowls and water dishes sat untouched. His sister called him on the cellphone and asked him how her dogs were doing. He lied about the night before and told her that he dumped the bird bath remains into the compost. He hung up before she finished talking and took the gun with him as he strapped on boots.

Outside the home Cream discovered the bird bath smashed to pieces, his car tires slashed, and two bloody dog collars hung from bare curled branches of the front yard tree. All the potted plants were upside down and spilled, fresh soil covered the sidewalk, mushrooms and weeds grew from the trailer of ruined furniture. Something broke off the lever to the home's water, and severe impacts collapsed the garage door. He called for the dogs to come but he heard only the lonely whistle of gray sky and stagnant choking of leaves in the gutter. He ran into the trees calling for them again and again.

Little whispers laughed at him as he scrambled in the thorns and gravel. One of the dogs he found hanging from an old limestone bridge. He died sometime in the night. The other dog whimpered not too far away. Cream went down a path of limestone steps to the forest floor where he found the surviving dog buried between a fallen tree and a gulch of leaves.

The dog held in its mouth a dead and ugly creature that brought Cream to revulsion. It wore bloody clothing covered in a beard of white fuzz swarming with bees. Its nose was broken off, and its big eyes popped out of its skull. The neck was small, but the dog cleaved it open so it fit in his mouth. Short limbs dangled from foaming jaws. 

Cream fell to his knees and shouted in bewilderment and confusion. One of the creature's little boots fell to the ground. It looked just like one of the hideous men he saw the wizard's shack long ago. As he looked into its face he heard air escape from the holes in his throat. It still lived and whispered into the woods.

Cream guided the dog back home under a chorus of sinister echos and crackling forestry. The dog seemed to find danger under every rock and up every tree as he whimpered and panted at the slightest tussle of dander. No matter how many times Cream asked the dog to drop the dead creature the dog only growled at him and bit harder into the blue flesh. Once back to the house, Cream burned the creature’s body in the grill. White smoke filled the air all day and the dog nursed deep wounds on the kitchen floor as Cream went back into the woods to find and bury the dead dog, but the body disappeared into a squirming heap of snails and blood.

All day long Cream heard their curses cascading from the gnarled oaks. He heard them in the crawl space, and in the walls. The dog went downstairs to hide from their cackles but he ended up growling at the open hatch. Every time Cream glanced out from the upstairs window he saw more and more of them scamper on the lawn. He knew the neighbors must be watching out of jealousy, and so he fired his shot gun at their houses.

More and more of the terrible creatures assembled around his home. They drank from the fountain and stood looking into his windows. They called for Cream to come out to them as he reloaded the weapon to fire again at the neighbors. He thought he hit one of them as he shattered their window, and shot at another car passing by on the road. His duffle bag lay open at his feet. As night fell, and the creatures made their ways up the steps, Cream hit the pipe of crystals again. Too stressed, too frightened, he decided that if anything he needed more ice, a lot more, not less.

The homeless who play in those woods say they saw the old wizard fly in the sky on his cane, and land before the little creatures who knelt before him. Rings of blood surrounded the house. The burned creature crawled out of the grill, its eyes glowing and its mouth gushing green blood. They dragged Cream screaming out from the house by his broken feet, and pulled him deep into the woods to be buried the pits where the mammoth doth sleep. Some say they buried him under even deeper layers where not even the old Wizard can find his remains, in dwelling depths where living monstrosities still eat coals and crawl on the ceiling of the earth.  

Shawnice returned and found her brother gone from the house. Broken glass littered the hardwood and wind soared in through the windows. The doors lay smashed to pieces on the floor, both her dogs shivered in the basement nursing each others wounds. The hatch sealed shut once more with extra thick and reinforced latches. She found  his duffle bag of drugs, and explored the neighbors house to discover the bodies he shot to death. 

One night after Shawnice moved in with her dogs, she heard slurping from outside. She peeked out of the blinds and saw a little man in a funny hat taking water from the bath and drinking it from his hands. Slurp. Slurp. slurp. 

art: A Mansion in the Darkness - Morten Schelde , 2015.