Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 105: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE GOBLINS WILL GET YOU This was the first indication of the peculiar irrelevancy which governed their reactions. Later on it was enough to drive anyone crazy. As a matter of ~ fact it did. “But you are speaking English,” I remarked, collecting my thoughts as rapidly as possible and pulling my pajamas away from my legs to which they were glued with cold perspiration. “That’s what you think,” three cavernous mouths intoned solemnly in unison and three enormous heads bent toward me. “We want to know the rules.” “You mean the ropes,” I answered. | “We mean the rules,” snapped the first big head. : “That’s what I mean.” I said and picked up a flashlight. The beam didn’t affect them at all. But the case flew back suddenly and crashed through the back of the bed. : ‘Don’t get tough!” warned all the heads’ wiggling and waggling. I nursed a wrenched wrist and stuck my tongue out at them. “So help me Joe, I only wanted to see you better. Though why, I don’t know. By the standards of this world you make a hippopotamus look like a raging beauty.” They subsided grumbling. The flashlight was returned, badly dented. Well, the first few nights were the hardest. I managed to get them past the silly impression that they didn’t speak English at the end of the second. By the fourth night I was missing the lost sleep. But I got no reprieve. | They were queer creatures by any standards. At first they were reticent in talking about themselves. What was wanted chiefly was knowledge about other people. From hints they let drop I concluded, finally, that they were certainly not of the tribe of Adam or any branch thereof or doing business at the same stand. 1 After awhile I stopped feeling sleepy. This was due mainly to the fact that while they read the books they had me bring around from the local libraries, I snatched a couple of thousand winks, interrupted at choice intervals by a twinge as they awakened me by the crude, though simple process of banging | the book on my forehead. What a sight in the odd glow which emanated from all around them! Like a scene out of some Oz book. A row of heads gathered in a semi-circle, beyond the light, pitch blackness and me in bed. Great eyes popping and staring. Occasionally one or another would laugh and the whole bunch would go reeling off into instability for a few seconds and then come to a stand- still like water in a quiet pool. : I stood all this for two weeks. When I ran out of money paying for lend- ing library rentals, they materialized some and gave it to me. 7 Holy mother! Twenty thousand smackers in good old one dollar bills! Comiclbooks.co im