Barbara Jollymont was enjoying her retirement. She spent the first two decades at home; a cosy little bungalow near the beach with a few gardenbeds and a friendly tabby cat. She named him after the tenor, Pavarotti, because of his big voice that yowled at their doorstep each morning. The cat wasn’t theirs, but it may as well have been.

When she moved to Sunny Hill Retirement Home, it was for Jeff, her husband. The love of her life had some form of cancer, one of those ones with the lengthy names full of prefixes and suffixes which the doctors rap out over the course of two breaths. They could say the words so confidently, but treating the cancer was not done with quite the same vigour. The surgeons wouldn’t operate lest they taint their pristine records, so Jeff’s oncologist had to make do with giving him enough prescriptions to fill the Yellow Pages. Either way, her cheeky, loving husband cantered on as though nothing was wrong. He had come to terms with it, even if she hadn’t.

That’s life, she figured.

On the first Tuesday of Spring, six months after they moved into Sunny Hill, Barb got up early to make breakfast for both of them and to prepare a lunchbox for Jeff. Today was the day of The Golf Trip. She made salami and cheese sandwiches — both fillings minced up so he didn’t have to chew — and cut the bread into triangles. His pills (morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea), went in separated sections on the top layer of the box. She placed a small square of dark chocolate next to each bundle.

When Jeff came out, he had his lucky hat on and his golf bag wheeling along behind him. His legs were bare, just little sticks supporting his wiry frame.

“Pants, dear,” he said. “I seem to have lost them.”

Barb laughed, gave him a kiss on the cheek, then pointed at the couch. “Just there. Freshly ironed, should still be warm if you put them on right-quick.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Barb.” He shuffled over to the couch. “You and the girls got plans while we’re gone? Fred says they’re bringing in some of those dancing firefighters whose pants fly off at the pull of a string.”

Now Barb cackled. She could imagine Fred saying that. Their neighbour thought everyone had an ulterior motive. “If that should happen, I assure you I won’t stay for long. No, I thought I might call Jason, see if he’ll bring the kids around after school.”

“Sounds lovely,” Jeff replied. “I might be back by then. Could take a while for us old farts to do nine holes.”

There was a rumble as the bus parked outside their house. A bulky nurse walked up the path, his blue slacks bulging around his biceps.

Jeff finished tugging on his pants and retrieved his lunchbox. “Here comes Reynold! You reckon he could lift my bag in one hand, me in the other?”

Barb smiled and shooed him out the door. I think the golf bag may be the harder part of that equation.

She watched Jeff totter down the path with one arm on Reynold’s. He stepped into the mostly empty bus, which would soon be full of the entire male-population of Sunny Hill Retirement Home, at least those who were mobile. Even some of the ones who didn’t or couldn’t play golf were still going, substituting their golf bags for camping chairs and flasks of liquor that they would try to smuggle past the nurses. The bus puttered along to the next house, then the next, and soon it was around the corner and out of sight.

With the house to herself, Barb sat in her armchair and thought about Jeff’s question. What would the girls do? There was a good seven or eight hours until her grandkids might get here — subject to Jason’s availability of course, their son was always terribly busy — which gave her ample time to set something up.

She considered a picnic, maybe a few rounds of bocce or lawn bowls, then thought the idea of the firefighters might be rather popular indeed. After almost nodding off in her chair, she decided to go for a walk. She could just call the other residents, of course, but it would be easier to convince people if she was on their doorstep, face to face.

Polly’s house was up first. Amir, Polly’s husband, had insisted that he could do all the gardening himself, then promptly let the front grass go wild and left the roses to fend for themselves. A spattering of amaranthas had cropped up around the place, which Barb knew would soon cover every square-inch of real estate if left unattended. She fought her way up the overgrown path and rang the doorbell.

“Coming!” came Polly’s voice. There was a grunt, a fart, then the squeak of plastic wheels as the ninety-year-old inched down the hallway. She’d taken a fall a few months ago and, in her pinched Irish accent, claimed to have ‘broke ‘er butt like a boiled hen’. Barb had boiled a lot of hens in her life, but she had no idea what that meant.

“Almost there!” she encouraged. “I could’ve just come in, you know.”

“No, no. You stay there,” Polly replied. “Doc says movement is good for me. Says it just be broozin, not brooken.” She got to the door and opened up, puffing. “Now, how kenna help you?”

“Well, I thought us girls should get together and do something,” Barb started. “Just while the men are off whacking golf balls into trees and complaining about it.”

Polly smiled. “When the cats are away, the mice come out to play! What did you have in mind?”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Oh, you know. Lawn bowls, maybe a glass of champagne if we’re allowed.” She was adding the last part on a whim — she knew Polly appreciated a few drops of the good stuff. “Nice and central, and I’ll call management, see if they’ll pick us up and deposit us at the green.”

“I should think they would,” Polly said. “Considering the fees they make us pay. Did you see the latest…”

Their conversation derailed into village gossip and Polly’s latest ruminations on both Australian and American politics. The lady could read out a recipe for banana bread and she’d find some way to make it political. Eventually, Barb extricated herself with a polite goodbye, mentioning that there were many other houses to get to.

It wasn’t a lie. Realising the magnitude of the village, she thought she might just go along until there were enough people to get the ball rolling. If she called the rest of them and simply quoted her list of committed names, they’d break out the makeup and brush the dust bunnies from their nicest rags before they’d even hung up the phone.

She made it to the north side of Sunny Hill. The area had been a blank construction site since Barb and Jeff arrived, just a flat area of clay maybe two feet higher than the rest of the village. A big yellow excavator sat idle in the middle of the lot with ‘Crafty Earthmoving’ detailed on the side. Someone had done a bad job of turning the f and the first t into p’s.

“Crappy Earthmoving,” Barb murmured. “Lovely.”

She visited a few more houses and made handshake-deals with Loretta, Mei, Robin and Bonny. There were a few in the ‘Tentative Yes’ column, but she was sure they’d come round once they got on their landlines and started gossiping. That was the way it usually went.

After recruiting enough soldiers to fill her platoon of lawn bowlers, Barb strolled back past the construction site. She looked at the excavator with the crude sign one more time and noticed something strange in the bucket of the machine. It either wasn’t there before, or she just hadn’t seen it because she was walking the other direction.

Whatever it was, it looked like a jack-in-a-box but with clear glass sides and a revolving blue diamond in place of the usual puppet. Below the diamond a miniature creature, green and foul and dressed in torn slivers of rags, was poised as though it were balancing the diamond on its finger.

What an odd thing for the builders to leave behind, she thought. It was also quite odd that no one had seen the peculiar object on their morning walks. It was bright enough to draw the eye, that’s for sure.

Curiosity propelled her up the slight embankment, her shoes sinking to her ankles in the crumbly dirt. If Jeff were here, he would tell her that she is no spring chicken; she shouldn’t be tempting fate by marauding around as though she had strong bones and an absence of vertigo. Nonetheless, Jeff was probably fifty kilometres away by now, lining up a shot on some manicured golf course.

As Polly had said so astutely, when the cat is away, the mice come out to play.

The diamond seemed to spin faster when she approached. The little green creature looked like a child who had bathed in a swamp. It had a snarl plastered to its face, but it was focused on the spinning diamond. Barb reached out to touch the box, maybe she could take it to Lost and Found…

Just as she made contact, the diamond stopped right in its tracks. A blue aura wafted out from the box, shimmering and passing through Barb like a gust of cold wind. It spread in size, accelerating. She could only watch as it encompassed the entirety of Sunny Hill Retirement Home in a matter of seconds.

Then it solidified.

The outside world was obscured, the sky above her only visible in the way that one can occasionally see a riverbed through murky water. Residents from across the road stood on their front porches, noticing Barb then dismissing her in preference of the unearthly aura surrounding the village. Barb hurried away from the excavator and slid down the embankment on her bottom.

Nice dress be damned, she thought. I have to call Jeff.

When she reached the footpath and looked back, the construction site had changed quite drastically. There were tunnels along the length of the embankment — twenty or thirty of them opening into Sunny Hill like the great concrete pipes that carry water into floodgates. However, these tunnels were formed of dirt, and they looked like a decent kick might crumble the whole lot.

A face glared out from the dark tunnel nearest her. Yellow eyes squinted. A creature emerged, its gross appearance matching the miniature thing she’d seen in the box. But this one was big — up to her belly button at least. It had long grey claws, and webbed feet that flicked dirt when it walked.

It was approaching her. Speeding up. Running. Chasing.

She yelped and scampered across the road, doing something more than a hobble but less than a run. Her hip protested, a dull ache of immobility spreading down her bony thigh. She made it to Mei’s front garden, where a straw broom leaned against the porch railing. It mightn’t do a lot to fend off the creature, but she figured it could make a heck of a racket if thumped against the porch or sent through Mei’s front window.

“Help!” she cried. Her throat was dry, a coughing fit just waiting to double her over. “Mei? Please! Help!”

She coughed into her elbow and snatched the broom from where it leant. There was a zap of energy like an electric shock, then a snake of purple light crawled from her elbow and flowed through the wood of the broom. The tendrils of straw at the end of the pole melded into thin metal spikes. The broom itself turned silver, extremely lightweight in her hands, though she had no doubt that if she thumped this thing into Mei’s porch, she would be on the hook for a dirty-great-big maintenance bill.

The creature snarled and snapped, leaping at her with claws outstretched. She knew what it was, now. A goblin, one of those mystical creatures that were in many of the books she read to her grandkids. They were the bad guys, the ones that the smiling, valiant hero or heroine would defeat in stunning fashion.

Barb jabbed at the goblin with her broom. Her weapon, she supposed. It shifted in her hand, guiding itself toward the monster and plunging a group of spikes into its flesh. The goblin screeched, dark blue blood shooting from its wound, then the whole thing popped into a spray of blue light and goblin guts, swirling up to meet the aura surrounding her home.

Barb collapsed onto Mei’s porch just as the old lady made it to the door. There were rollers in Mei’s hair, and a slice of cucumber sliding down her left cheek. Another stuck to her bathrobe.

“Barb! What on earth is happening?! A blue light went straight through my home and—"

“Mei, look!” She pointed across the street at the multiple set of yellow eyes watching them from the tunnels below the construction site. They blinked and scurried away once they knew they had been spotted. “Goblins! Underneath the embankment! I killed one, but…”

Mei sat down next to her and stared in horror at the dome surrounding their village and the splattered remains on her gardenbed. Barb briefly thought it might be decent fertiliser.

“Goblins? Are you mad? And what have you done to my broom?!”

Barb sighed and inspected the malicious weapon she now wielded.

What indeed?