Gribblebob's Book of Unpleasant Goblins
Page 1
This book is for Elvira, Sam and Tilly,
without whom there wouldn’t be a book
and I wouldn’t be me.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
About the Author
Copyright
CHAPTER 1
It probably started that Wednesday afternoon, the one when it rained and the sun shone at the same time and there was that long, echoey tumble of thunder. I guess, looking back, you could say it was a sign—or a portent, as Granny C liked to say. When there was sun and rain at the same time, Granny C said it meant that, somewhere, a dog and a cat were getting married. But then again, Granny C smelt of stale lavender sticks and dust, and always wore strange clothes from the charity shop. Mainly tartan.
Still, anyway, that’s probably when it started.
The rain had stopped, but the sun was bright and sharp as a wasp’s wing, and Anna and Nils were walking home from the park. Nils had fallen off the “whizz-wheel”—that’s what he called it—and had scraped his knee a little, so he wanted to go home and get a Spider-Man plaster. They were walking along the dirt path that wound its way through Timberton Woods. Well, they called them “woods” but really it was just a small explosion of trees between the park and home. It was a bit odd they were there really, as there weren’t any other trees close by, just this thick cluster of dark oaks, sweet chestnuts and silver birches. The children were on the bit of the path leading into the woods, when they noticed a little man walking ahead of them.
He was no taller than Anna—who wasn’t very tall for her age anyway—and was walking in a very determined and speedy manner. He splashed through a puddle on the path and wobbled slightly, looking rather like a discombobulated penguin trying not to drop his best fish.
Nils raised his hand to point at the fast-moving figure, but Anna pushed it down and shushed him. One of their mum’s best friends had a sister about the same size, who told really funny stories and had dyed-blue streaks in her spiky hair. They had met her once when Nils was quite young, and she’d explained that she was a “little person”. Something had happened to her when she was in her mummy’s tummy, so she didn’t develop like other people. She explained there was nothing to be scared of and how she was used to people staring at her, but Mum told them afterwards that it isn’t nice to stare or point or make fun of people just because they are a bit different.
The little man really was hurrying along the path, but he kept stopping and muttering every now and again, so the children had nearly caught up to him just before the path entered the woods. Then they noticed the really strange thing. He had a dog lead in his hand, which trailed down to where you might expect to see a dog, but there was nothing there. The collar the lead was attached to was just sort of… hanging there. Now, that wasn’t the strange thing, as they had both seen novelty items like that before—you can get them in the party shop in town, the one next to the estate agents, and the lead is actually stiff plastic to make it look like you are taking an invisible dog for a walk. So, no, that wasn’t the strange thing. The strange thing was that, in the bright sunshine, you could clearly see the little man’s shadow and the shadow of the lead, but also the shadow of some sort of small dog trotting along besides him. The shadow of a dog that wasn’t there!
At first, Anna thought the joke-shop leads were getting really clever, but then the dog (that wasn’t there) did some type of sneezy bark. The little man yanked on the lead, bent down to the dog and grumbled loudly.
“Be quiet, Dimple! Bad dog. Bad, bad dog. I know you’re hungry, but we’re so late!”
As he had bent down he had also half turned, so he saw Nils and Anna just behind him.
“Oh crumblesnips,” they heard him say, and then he quickened his pace and pulled hard on the lead. They saw the shadow legs of the dog that wasn’t there—Dimple, I guess—move briskly with a quiet little bark of annoyance. The little man and his accompanying shadows moved faster along the path. The path turned as it entered the woods and the children lost sight of him.
“Come on,” Anna said to Nils, “let’s catch him up!” and they broke into a slight run.
Well, when they turned into the woods, the path straightened out and continued between the darkness of the trees, but they couldn’t see the little man anywhere.
“Where’s he gone?” asked Nils.
“Shh,” said Anna, putting a finger to her lips and stopping Nils with her other hand. “Let’s see if we can hear him,” she whispered, and they were both quiet and still. They heard nothing, apart from scattered birdsong and a slight rustle of leaves in the breeze.
Nils bent down and picked up something from the path. “Do you think he dropped it?” he asked, handing the item over.
It was a tiny book, which just fitted into Anna’s palm. The book was cracked, brown leather, and in fancy gold-leaf writing the title read:
CHAPTER 2
Bengt Arbuthnot hated his name. He hated it much more than he hated school, and he hated school very much indeed. Well, that wasn’t really fair, it wasn’t school he hated—he hated Mandy Musgrave.
Mandy was a short, flat sort of a girl, with ribbony hair and flubbery lips that had a constant film of spit over them. Mandy was very funny and always had something to say that made everyone else, even the teachers, laugh. Unfortunately, she mostly had things to say about Bengt, although these were not in front of the teachers. Mandy thought that Bengt’s name was especially funny. She often called him “Burnt-My-Butt-Off” or “Ben-No-Butt” or something else involving bottoms.
Bengt couldn’t help his name. His mother was Swedish and his father’s family had originally come from Yorkshire. His mother’s grandfather had been called Bengt, his mother’s father had been called Bengt, his mother was called Bengta, and she had been adamant when he was born that he was going to carry on the family tradition. His father wanted to call him Ian, which he thought was a good Yorkshire sort of name, and Bengt would have liked that: Ian Arbuthnot. Although Mandy might still have called him “Knee-in Your-Hard-Butt-Knot” or something like that. Still, it was what it was, and he was called Bengt Arbuthnot, and he hated his name and the parts of school involving Mandy Musgrave—and custard.
This particular day, he was sitting under his favourite tree—Doesn’t everyone have a favourite tree? he wondered sometimes—with his l
ittle notebook, writing down possible alternative names that he might use when he got old enough to change his name by deed poll. Jack Broadsword was his current favourite, but he was also rather taken with Oscar Oakheart and Will Sky. Or maybe Will Summersky? So much to think about. His pen was poised to write down another name, something with “knight” in, when suddenly Bengt’s world turned upside down. There was a low, long dice-throw of thunder, and Bengt looked up at the warm, grey sky, just in time to see the bright flash of lightning arrowing straight at him. There was a sense of being pulled up, out of himself, of rollercoaster-tumbling, of slipping. He could still feel his notebook and pen in his hands, but then tiredness washed through him and his fingers relaxed, and the book and pen slipped away from him.
And everything changed.
CHAPTER 3
“What’s it about?” asked Nils. “‘Unpleasant goblins.’ What does that mean? Aren’t all goblins unpleasant?”
“I don’t know,” Anna replied, turning the book over in her palm. “Perhaps not. Maybe some are more unpleasant than others,” she said, smiling.
“Open it up, maybe there are pictures or something.”
Anna tried to do as her little brother asked, but the book wouldn’t open when she tried to pull the covers apart. It actually seemed to vibrate a little bit, like a wasp caught in an empty jam jar, angry and scared and slightly disappointed.
“It’s locked,” Anna said in surprise.
“Locked? Like your diary? But there’s no padlock.” Nils knew where Anna kept the key to her diary: under the big brown seashell she kept on her windowsill. Not that he had ever opened it when she was out, to check if she had written anything about him… (She hadn’t.)
“I know, that’s the strange thing. You try, maybe it’s just me.”
She handed the book over. As he took it, Nils looked up at her in wide-eyed surprise.
“It’s fluttering or something!” he exclaimed. He too tried to open the book, but it remained stubbornly shut.
“Do you think it’s got some type of battery-operated lock in it?” he asked. “Maybe that’s why it’s humming. Maybe you just need to press somewhere,” he guessed, and he started to jab at the book in random places, but all in vain.
“It looks a bit old to have a battery in it,” said Anna, taking the book back from her brother. “But it is really strange that we can’t open it.”
“Anna…” began Nils, “do you think the little man with the dog that wasn’t there was a goblin?”
Anna stopped trying to open the book and looked down at Nils. Sometimes she forgot how young he was.
“Nils, you know that there aren’t any such things as goblins. They’re just made up.”
“But he had a dog that we couldn’t see!”
“Well, that was a bit odd, but we don’t really know what we saw, do we?”
“This might be a magic book—a magic, goblin book, and that’s why we can’t open it. I think we should put it back on the path where we found it and just go home.” He was starting to sound a little bit scared.
“No, Nils, we can’t leave it here. What if it rains again and the book gets ruined? We’ll take it home and see if we can open it there. If it does open, we can see if it has a name or phone number in and we can call that little man and give him his book back. That’s the nicest thing to do.”
“I don’t like it though, Anna. I think it’s a goblin book. I think it’s dangerous.” With that, he snatched the book from his sister’s hand and flung it into the dark of the trees by the side of the path.
“NILS!” shouted Anna angrily. “Why did you do that?”
“Because he’s a very sensible young man, it seems.”
Anna and Nils turned round at the sound of the strange, sandpaper-and-honey voice and saw the little man standing there, holding the lead in one hand, which seemed to be straining with the pull of the dog they couldn’t see. Even though they couldn’t see the dog, they could hear its low growl.
“Quiet, Dimple,” the little man said, tugging at the lead. “I don’t think I’ll need to let you loose after all. You’ll have to wait for some fresh meat.”
Anna and Nils looked at each other and then back at the little man. Seeing him up close and still like this, they saw that he was roughly the same height as Nils. He had a back-to-front baseball cap on, with a coil of wiry blonde hair springing out from underneath. He had huge, sparkling, almost amber eyes and skin the colour of—
“Oh, stop staring,” said the little man. “I’m not that interesting. You, boy,” he continued, tipping his head towards Nils. “Go and find my book, and bring it to me right away. Or I’ll let Dimple here have a taste of you.”
“Just a minute—” began Anna, not liking the way the little man was speaking to her brother, but the little man just sighed, closed his eyes, raised his eyebrows and held his hand up, indicating for her to be quiet.
“Young lady, I don’t have time for any outraged human emotions. I am extremely busy and extremely late. I have an extremely hungry dog here and you and your little friend would make an extremely tasty snack, so I’d advise you just to keep quiet while he gets my book. Off you go,” he said, looking back at Nils again.
Nils waited a breath and then scrambled into the trees where he had thrown the book.
Both Anna and the little man followed Nils with their eyes and when they couldn’t see him any more, they looked back at each other.
“So,” said the little man, “what weather today, hey?”
CHAPTER 4
When Jack Broadsword awoke, he felt different. Changed somehow. He still felt the beat of a warrior’s heart in his chest, and the breath of the forest at his neck made him feel alive and at home—but he felt more, somehow. A little more alive, a little more aware of the forest, and the beat of his heart, and the blood in his veins and the feel of the sword in the scabbard by his leg. He felt more… he felt more like a Bengt than a Jack. He stood up with a start and put his hand to his face, and felt the beard there, felt the scar on his cheek where the razor wing had cut deep. Yes, Jack Broadsword, that was his name—purehearted warrior of the True Dreamers, hero of the Sapphire Wars, vanquisher of his greatest enemy: the evil and foul Mandy Musgrave. No, wait, that wasn’t right…
He put out a hand to steady himself against the tree. Doesn’t everyone have a favourite tree? he thought, and then shook his head, wondering where the thought had come from. He looked down and saw a little notebook on the ground with a pen lying across its open pages. Jack bent down and picked it up. His name was written there, in a very ornate manner: Jack Broadsword. He also saw some other names he half-recognized—Oscar Oakheart, William Sky, William Summersky… He knew them from somewhere, but where? Jack felt a little dizzy. Something was definitely not right with him. He gripped the comforting handle of his sword and breathed out. What witchcraft was this?
CHAPTER 5
Anna could hear her brother in the trees, rustling and cracking and looking for the little man’s book. She felt a little scared and a little angry, but she was also more than a little curious.
“Why can’t we see your dog?” she blurted out.
“What?” said the little man.
“Your dog. Why can’t we see him?”
The little man looked down at the vacant space at the end of his lead, and then at Anna.
“I told you. He’s very hungry.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.” Anna shook her head and held her right wrist with her left hand, which was something she always did when she was stressed or worried. “Just because he’s hungry, doesn’t mean he’s invisible.”
The little man sighed, and tugged a little on the lead.
“This is an extremely hungry dog. He hasn’t eaten anything for the whole day. He is absolutely vanished.”
“Vanished?” echoed Anna. “Don’t you mean famished?”
“I mean what I mean,” snapped the little man. Just then, Nils appeared out of the dark of the woods
.
“I-I can’t find it,” he stammered.
The little man raised his eyes to the heavens and kicked the back of one foot against another.
“Look harder. Oh, and you might try whistling. Something jaunty. That might help.”
Nils retreated back into the trees and they could hear his off-key attempt at whistling.
“Beautiful,” said the little man, more to himself than to Anna.
“No, but famished means really hungry, and vanished means not there,” argued Anna.
“What? Oh, that. It’s all a question of letters and words and intent. Say the right words the wrong way, or the wrong words the right way—mean what you say and say what you mean and see what you may. If he’s a hungry dog, then it’s only a couple of letters changed and he’s a vanished dog—and what’s a couple of letters between bends?”
Anna was quiet for a moment, then decided to ignore what the little man had said, as she didn’t really understand it, and said, “But he’s not really vanished, he’s not invisible like that—we could see his shadow.”
“Of course you could see his shadow!” snapped the little man. “Why wouldn’t you see his shadow? It’s not like he isn’t there. He’s just vanished. A good bit of fresh meat…”—Anna didn’t like the way he looked at her then—“and he’ll be bright as brains again.”
“But…” Anna began, but just then Nils hopped out of the woods again with a triumphant smile on his face and the little book held high in his hand.
“Got it!” shouted Nils. “I did what you said. I whistled, and after that I could hear my whistle echoing back in some strange way, and when I followed the echo I found it.”
“Yes, well, it likes a good ditty, although it normally likes it to be in tune. Still—okay, very well. My book, please.” The little man held out his hand towards Nils.
Nils started to move forward but then hesitated and looked at his sister. She was holding one wrist, which was never a good sign. “Are you a goblin?” he asked, at which the little man snorted.