John Coyne - Hobgoblin

[dem bones]

John Coyne - Hobgoblin (Fontana, 1982: originally Putnam, 1981)

Blurb:
HOBGOBLIN
is just a game
BALLYCASTLE
is just a house
THE GARDINERS
are just an ordinary family. Until one stormy, violent Hallow’een night, the deadly truth about the house emerges - and a Hobgoblin rises to destroy all those he loves.

A cautionary tale.

"If Brian Boro is killed, Scott, we're finished. There's no way Boobach or Saint Finn can get Blind Billy out of Lough Neagh!"

Connecticut, 1980. Sixteen year old Scott Gardiner is the most popular kid at the Spencertown Academy on account of he introduced his contemporaries and their tutors to the wonders of Hobgoblin, a fantasy wargame inspired by Celtic mythology. Scott is also the school's undefeated Hobgoblin champion, his character, Brian Boru, have accumulated enough points to elevate him to a "25th level paladin." The secret of his success? Scott identifies so strongly with Boru that he remains in character even on those extremely rare occasions when he's engaged in something other than battling headless Buggane and evil Nuckelavee at Blacksod Bay or whatever.

But the fates have conspired to rob the boy of all he holds dear.

While Scott-as-Boru is locked in a life or death struggle with a Brobdingnaglon, his dad keels over in the garden. Fatal heart attack! Even as Warren Gardiner slumps in the snow, the giant fanged amphibian steals a controversial victory and Brian Boru is stripped of his every hard won point. The ignominy of defeat almost does for Scott who suffers "a psychic seizure, a disassociation from reality" culminating in an unspecified violent episode. Dr. Frisch believes this is an entirely normal reaction to the loss of his daddy. Mom wishes he's grow out of that stupid card game and take a girlfriend.

"It had been a rich man's perversion. In the 1920's Fergus O'Cuileannain had imported the old castle from the west of Ireland, then rebuilt it stone by stone on the bluff overlooking the river."

New York, 1981. Struggling to make ends meet, Barbara, an art historian, accepts a live in job opportunity at the rich man's folly, Ballycastle, on the banks of the Hudson. Barbara is hired to write a history of the imported mansion and catalogue its treasures. No more exclusive boys school for Scott! He's enrolled at Flat Rock High School to slum it with bullying football jocks, farm boys, girls, and other "Third-level Barrow-Wights", none of whom share his passion for the greatest RPG of them all. This is a species so low down on the evolution scale they've never even heard of it!

Nick Borgus and numbskull croney Hank Simpson take an instant dislike to the nerdy new preppie with his flash car, as does coach Tagarielio who bloods him in a "football" (English: rounders in bondage) trial on the eve of the big game versus the formidable Spruce Pine. Borgus and Simpson duly batter him to pulp in a US equivalent of Hugh Gunn's ultra-violent Son Of The Werewolf kickabout (grassroots football at it's finest). "Welcome to Flat Rock!" sneers Tagarielio, as if Scott didn't already hate every creep in the damn place.

It's not all bad. Back home at the castle, Scott has befriended Conor Fitzpatrick, the castle's aged caretaker, who fills his head with more nonsense about the Erin Isle. And ... love is in the air! Inexplicably surly Scott has attracted a secret admirer, Valerie Dunn, only the classiest, most beautiful girl in Flat Rock. Could it be that mom's prayers have been answered?

We doubt it.

[to be continued]