When the woman got struck by the bus right in front of me, I didn’t understand it was because I’d been rude to my waiter ten minutes earlier. At the time, I hadn’t even called myself being rude at all—he’d left me without a refill for nearly ten minutes, and all I’d said when he apologized was that ‘sorry doesn’t fill my cup’. Well, that and ‘or help your tip’. But still, I thought it was a small thing, and I was irritated, and I did feel bad afterward. Even left a big tip to make up for it.
But in the moment that the woman left the sidewalk only to be slammed into by the metal face of a crosstown bus, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I was thinking about the terrible wet sound she made as she went under the wheels, the too-warm spray of her juices hitting the right side of my face as I gasped and sucked a bit of her down. I started screaming. Everyone did. It was thirty minutes before I could start absently wiping the blood off as I gave a statement to an officer. I didn’t have anything to tell. I’d not even noticed the woman beside me until she stepped into oncoming traffic, and I had no idea that she might have been pushed at all, much less because of my prior sin.
It wasn’t until I got home and started stripping off everything that I found it. I’d almost just thrown everything away I could without getting arrested for indecency, but my coat was expensive and I’d only had it a year. A couple of rounds of dry-cleaning might get rid of the awful sm…
There was something in my coat’s outer pocket.
My first thought was an old receipt or ticket, but no, the thickness and weight was wrong. Pulling it free from my pocket, I saw it was a heavy piece of slick black paper, folded into a tight square and embossed with gold. The back, where the intersecting diamonds of folded corners were tucked together, made a beautiful tangle of gleaming scrollwork. Turning it over, I sucked in an involuntary breath.
It was a pair of golden eyes. Not just the eyes themselves, but the thick, fleshy lids around them. Old, tired, pitiless eyes that stared out from the paper at me with a look that was both weary and knowing. I chided myself for being foolish—it was just a drawing, after all. I turned the paper back over quickly, telling myself it was just to unfold it, and not to get away from that gaze. Opening it up, I found the inside was a nighttime blue, glittering with lines of silver text set to mimic a small and efficient style of handwritten note. It said:
If you’ve found this note, you have acquired a very unique companion. There are some that call them Tengu or other things, but I prefer my own name. A sin goblin.
This sin goblin is always with you now, though you cannot see or hear it. It will watch you all the time, and while this may be disquieting, rest assured that it will never harm you directly. In fact, at its core, this goblin is a very upright and moral creature. And so long as you are similarly upright and moral, you may never notice its presence at all.
Unfortunately, most of us are not perfect. There may well come times where you transgress in the sin goblin’s eyes, and when that occurs, there will be consequences. Not to you—as I said, it will never harm you directly. But it will inflict punishment on others in your sight, and these punishments can be severe and cruel.
You may not believe any of this now, of course. In time, that will change. I offer this message as an explanation and a kindness—a small lamp for your feet as you move forward with your new friend close behind.
Good luck.
I almost threw it in the trash then and there, but something stopped me. Instead, I put it on the hallway table, stripped off my clothes, and scrubbed myself in the shower until my skin was hot and raw. I was so tired and shellshocked that I didn’t even think about the note again until the next day.
It was about the time that I watched one of my friends die.
We’d been coming back in from a smoke break. Me and Tony Lasco from the third floor were ahead on the stairs going up, with Murray lagging behind us a few steps. We always took the stairs on smoke breaks—it was our half-joking attempt at mitigating the damage we were doing to our heart and lungs with every puff. But Murray was older and heavier than us, and it made him a bit slower on the climb back up.
When Murray fell, he gave a little startled gasp—not loud, but high and strange enough that I turned back to look. Just in time to see his legs going up as he pitched backward toward the concrete landing we’d just left. Plenty of time to see his head hit and turn as his weight and inertia drove him down, snapping his neck with a muffled popping sound before his feet jittered for a few seconds and then stilled. They told his wife later he’d died instantly, but that was a lie. We watched him gasp wetly for breath, his eyes rolling like a scared fish as he tried to understand why the world was suddenly upside down and closing in.
I was wondering the same thing.
Over the last two years, I’ve been responsible for twenty-two deaths, eighteen cripplings, five blindings, two deafenings, and one animal attack that…well, that person is still in ICU and isn’t expected to survive. For the first few days I was in disbelief. But by the fifth “accident” in my proximity, I was being questioned by police as a person of interest instead of a suspect. When they started questioning my bosses at work, my job didn’t last long.
Not that anyone could actually say I’d done anything—all of it had either been around other people or in places with cameras that could be checked. There were times where it did look like someone had been shoved or pulled, but there was never any actual evidence that anyone had done it or touched them at all. By the time they got tired of talking to me, I’d already reached the point where I barely left my house, and when I did, it was like exiting a space capsule to gather resources on some alien and hostile world.
I guarded everything I said or did, every look I gave or tone I had when speaking. I’d practice phrases and expressions in the mirror—canned responses and requests for every scenario I thought might occur during my expeditions out into the world. I found remote work that required no real interaction beyond emails, and I would spend hours scrutinizing every detail of a paragraph before hitting send.
And for a time, it worked. The horrors started declining, and by six months, I was averaging only one incident every few weeks. By my first anniversary of getting the card, I was on a streak that lasted for nearly thirteen months. I almost bought one of those workplace signs to hang in my office—you know, the ones that lets you brag how many days it’s been since an incident? But then I thought the sin goblin might take offense at that, and I quickly clicked off the website.
I’ve moved to a different state in the meantime. My few remaining friends and contacts in my old town—well, I’d cut them all off out of fear of hurting them, and truth be told, they didn’t seem to mind. I thought things would be easier with a fresh start, and I was right. I had my routines in place and I remained ever vigilant. I even started to enjoy going out again, if only a little. I’d been shut away for so long, and it had been such a long time since I’d had an incident, after all. I started to think that either I’d become a nice enough person that the goblin was satisfied, or maybe he hadn’t followed me when I moved away.
Then one day I stopped in to pick up a pizza at a local place I liked. I had called ahead, so all I had to do was politely wait my turn in line to pick up the pizza and pay. The man in front of me was being slow and annoying—fiddling with his wallet, wiping his snotty nose with his hand and then putting in his PIN with the offending finger, pulling out his card too fast so he had to do it all over again. The old me would have been staring daggers at him at the least, and a snide comment to him or the cashier wouldn’t have been out-of-bounds. Now? I just hummed as I looked around the restaurant and checked my phone for any work emails while the dude finally shuffled away, offering a parting sneeze as he headed for the door.
I was saying hello to the cashier, asking how they were doing while inwardly congratulating myself on how far I’d come in the past couple of years. In so many ways it had been bizarre and horrifying, but maybe if I’d become a better person some good could come from it all. Heck, maybe the little guy wasn’t all b—
I froze.
Apologizing breathlessly to the cashier, I ran for the door, opening it as quickly as I could without risking bumping anyone or knocking a passerby outside. I looked around for the snotty man, but there was no sign of him. Heart about to burst out of my chest, I raised my voice for the first time in months.
“Bless you! Bless you!”
He must not have heard. Or if he did, the goblin judged it as too late. Because that night, my next door neighbor burned to death in her bed. She lived long enough to knock a small hole through the wall into my living room—not enough to get through, of course. Just enough for me to smell her cooking and watch as she curled up like a spent match on what was left of her bed.
The next day I took three thousand dollars out of savings and went to a private detective I found online. I didn’t tell him about the sin goblin, of course, but I did outline a rough timeline of two years of me being stalked and harassed, going all the way back to the day I got a sinister message left in my coat pocket. I’d tried to retrace my steps at the time, figure out when I’d gotten the goblin and from who, but it never went anywhere. I couldn’t remember any strange encounters that day, and all I’d done is go to an eye appointment, rode the train across town to get lunch, and then watched that poor woman get hit by the bus.
I didn’t hold out a lot of hope the detective would find out anything new, and at first he didn’t think he had. He told me he’d spoken to people at the eye doctor’s office and the restaurant I’d eaten at, but in two years memories had faded and some staff had changed. Still, no one remembered seeing or hearing anything strange that day.
Turning on his computer monitor, he took out a DVD and fumbled it into his desktop. “My last option was the train. No real chance of finding a person to talk to, but I know a guy that knows a guy. A grand of your money got me a copy of the security cam footage from the day you rode the train. I was afraid it was a waste, but then I saw this.” Hitting play on the video, he leaned back so I could see it more clearly.
It only took a moment for me to find myself, sitting on one of the aisle seats of a crowded midday train. The quickening motion outside the windows and the gentle sway of the rail handles let me know the train was starting back up after stopping at a station. As I watched, an old woman carrying several bags of what looked like groceries shuffled from the door over to my part of the car. She came to a stop in front of me, standing there expectantly as though she thought I’d offer up my seat. For my part, that past me never even looked up from my phone. I don’t remember if I truly didn’t see her or just ignored her because I didn’t want to get up, but after a few seconds, it didn’t matter. A kid in the row behind me stood up and gave the woman his seat, even going so far as to help her put her bags in the overhead rack before finding another seat further back.
I felt anger boiling in me as I stared at the small, monochrome woman on the screen. Was this her? Was that it? Had she really ruined my life and destroyed all these other people because I didn’t hop up to give her my fucking seat?
Gritting my teeth, I watched her like a hawk as the train rolled toward my station. She was right behind me. It would be the simplest thing in the world for her to slip it into my coat without me noticing. The angle wasn’t perfect, of course, but I felt like I’d see her at least look my way or lean forward when she did it. Instead, she just leaned back with her eyes closed as though she had fallen asleep.
The walls outside the train slowed again as it crawled up to my stop. Past me stood up, as did several others, but the old woman kept to her seat without stirring. The line of people streaming off the train started forward, the guy who had given up his chair right behind me. It was fast and subtle, but right before I stepped across to the platform and out of the camera’s view, I saw him drop the folded paper into my coat’s left pocket. I looked up at the detective.
“Tell me you know who he is.”
The man smiled. “Kind of. I can’t get any government records for the money you paid, but I was able to track down his online persona, which led me to an internet phone number. I tried it yesterday, and it still works. Guy who answered sounds about like I’d expect your stalker to sound.” He puffed out a breath. “So the question is, what do you want to do now? I can give this stuff to cops here or there, but I doubt they’ll do anything with it. Or if you have any more money, I can keep digging on this cat and see what…”
“Give it to me. Um, please.”
He frowned. “Give you what?”
I forced a smile. “The number. Please just give me the number.”
When I got to my car, I forced myself to spend five minutes doing breathing exercises and rehearsing what I would say if he answered. I had to be polite and cordial, while also finding out what I could and trying to get him to tell me how I could get rid of the goblin once and for all. Finger shaking, I punched in the number. He answered on the second ring.
“Uh huh?”
I felt my jaw clench, but I forced myself to smile as I replied. “Hey there. Sorry to bother you, but I got your number from an, um, associate. I know this may sound strange, but I think you may have been on a train with me a couple of years ago. You let an…um, a nice elderly lady have your seat, and I was sitting in front of you. This was in…”
“Oh, so you’re the guy, huh?”
I felt my face contracting into a frown. “Um yes. I think you gave me an envelope. And um…a new friend.”
There was a short bray of laughter on the other end of the line. “Shit yeah I did. Fuck man. How did you track me down?”
Swallowing, I tried to keep my voice even. “I…um…I paid a private detective. He found you from the camera on the train.”
Another chuckle. “Wow. That’s like some CSI shit, right? Good for you.”
The phone creaked slightly as I gripped it harder. “Um, yeah. Thank you. I just…I wanted to know how to…how to leave my new companion behind so my life can get back to normal.”
“So you can go back to being an asshole like the rest of us, right? I feel you. Thing is, you can’t.”
“What? Why? I mean…there has to be some way to get rid of it. You gave it to me, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s true, but that’s like my family’s thing.” There was a pause and then he spoke again, his tone more serious. “Look, man. My family got cursed with this thing like two hundred years ago, right? And the only way we can get rid of it for awhile is to dump it on someone else. And they can’t get rid of it without…y’know…croaking. Then it comes back to us until we find another schm…person to help us out. And that’s the deal?”
“That’s the deal? That’s the fucking deal?” I was yelling now, but I didn’t care. “You just kill people, ruin their lives, and it’s all a big joke to you?”
“Nuh-uh. I don’t hurt anybody. It’s the goblin. And he doesn’t hurt people unless you fuck up.”
“Two weeks ago I watched my neighbor burn to death because I didn’t say ‘bless you’ when a guy sneezed. I thought I had the rules figured out, but I’m not perfect and I think he’s getting stricter.”
There was a snort on the other end of the line. “Oh yeah, he’s a ticky little fucker. He starts out a bit easy-going, but the longer he’s with you, the more of a stickler he becomes. I had him for four years before I decided to sack-up and pass him on. That was after I farted at dinner on accident and then my girlfriend got mauled by a pack of dogs on the way home.” His voice got thin and watery-sounding. “I know it sucks, man. And I really am kind of sorry. But hey, at least I gave you some heads up. I even made the note all fancy so you’d take it serious.”
I could hear the sarcasm in my voice as I stared at the phone. “Sure. Thanks for that. Now listen. You’re going to figure out how to take this thing back or I’ll find you. I’ll find you and be your own personal sin goblin until you don’t have shit left. You get me?”
He actually sounded mildly offended when he answered. “Whoa, whoa dude. First of all, you won’t find me. I’ll drop this number after this call and I don’t live in that shit city. My family’s loaded—not unrelated to the curse, btw, but for your purposes, you just need to get that you’ll never find me. All you’ll do is piss off the goblin and hurt more people. Is that what you want?”
I started crying then. “Please. I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to hurt anyone else, but I want to have my life too.”
He sighed. “I get it. But all you have to do is don’t be a dick. Okay, maybe sometimes he’ll still flag you because he has some weird hang-ups, but you can figure those out. And when you make a mistake, just look at it like an act of God or something. Act of Goblin, right?”
“I…I don’t know that I can do that.”
“Well, you don’t have much of a choice, bud. I can’t take it back even if I wanted, which I do not want thank you very much. I mean you can take the permanent way out, but I discourage that, and not just because it’ll mean I have to find someone else to sic that little fucker on. Just…just be a good person and try not to worry about it. How hard can that be?” He took a deep breath and went on. “Though truth time—you were pretty aggro during this call, so you might see a bit of fallout from it. Just push past it and do better, right?”
“That’s easy for you to…”
“Shit, my food’s here. Holla!”
Then the line was dead.
I went to recall the number when I saw something at the edge of my vision. It was the detective hitting the asphalt in front of my car from his twelve-story fall. Retching into my mouth, I put the phone away and started heading home. It took awhile. Getting everywhere takes awhile now. I drive slow and careful, yielding to everyone I come across while also trying to not go so slow or cautious that I impede those around me. It’s maddening and terrifying, but also necessary.