Gribblebob's Book of Unpleasant Goblins

by David Ashby

  “That’s where they keep the curiosities,” whispered Anna.

  “Yes,” breathed Bengt, “that’s where those copper bottles were.”

  They moved to the back of the museum, towards the light, and they could hear a scratching and a scattering behind the door. William reached out and placed his slender fingers around the handle, then gently opened it. The light spilled out from the room, and they saw a very strange sight in front of them.

  There was a straight-backed man dressed rather like Anna imagined an old-fashioned bank manager would dress: fine, dark-blue three-piece suit, shoes shinier than a wedding-day limousine, crisp white collar and cuffs edging out sharply from the blue of the suit, dizzying bright-gold cufflinks, and a powder-blue silk explosion of a tie with a single silver tie pin. A short-back-and-sides haircut from a 1930s film on the TV, black hair parted and oiled, office-pale skin that looked like it had never seen the sun and eyes as blue and as exploded as his tie. The man was bent slightly over a museum exhibit, at such an angle that they couldn’t quite see what he was doing. Behind him, there seemed to be three or four shifting, dancing shapes, blurring in and out of focus.

  “Rip-riders,” Anna said, terrified.

  The bank-manager man looked up and smiled.

  “Oh, how perfectly marvellous,” he said, putting down whatever it was he had in his hand and turning round to face them properly. The sharp-edged man then clapped his hands once in delight and repeated: “Marvellous! If it isn’t William Wynn, out on a delightful little outing, I’d venture. And what is it that he’s brought with him on the trip? Why, if it isn’t one of the most unpleasant goblins I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter, two rather bland children and”—he took sight of Bengt for the first time—“and one of you. Oh, what fun we’ll have. Thank you, William, you have so made my day.”

  “Hobley,” said William carefully. “I had you down as a bad sort, but doing the Rider’s work? That’s a dark journey, even for you.”

  “William,” he said, stressing the final syllable and consonant. “I do my queen’s bidding. And, my, if you only knew what I’ve been promised. If you had only seen the things Maya has shown me. If you had only tasted just one sweet drop of what I have drunk of… then you’d understand.”

  The rip-riders hissed and shifted behind him.

  “You can’t be a-trusting that one,” said Gribblebob. “She’ll turn you up and down and round five times before breakfast and still not boil your egg.”

  Hobley Brown giggled. “Oh, my lovely little man. You are such a tonic. Truly unpleasant in all the best ways. You do make a weary heart smile.”

  “He’s right,” said William. “You can’t trust her. And if you open the book, if you unbind the spell, do you really want all that on your conscience? All the nightmares back. All the terror. All the hurt. Is it worth doing what she wants?”

  “Sweet William Wynn, we all do the bidding of others, do we not? We all have our masters and our mistresses and our paymasters and our homework-givers. Is that not true, bland children?” Hobley said, addressing the children directly now. “Don’t you have Wednesday night homework to do? Oh, I think by the time I’ve finished playing with you, you’ll all be wishing you had stayed home eating eggy soldiers and doing your nine times table.”

  Anna could see that Hobley had in front of him an ancient-looking book, which she guessed must be The Book of All Tomorrow’s Dreams, and she could also see the two small bottles she and Bengt had remembered, though they were more like very small vases, with long stems but bulbous bottoms.

  “It’s them!” she shouted, pointing.

  “Why, yes, you dull little girl, that’s exactly right. And, do you know, that’s most probably the last boring thing you’ll ever get to say of your own accord. Take them.”

  The last two words appeared to be spoken to the writhing forms around him, and as the last breath left his lips, the rip-riders flew towards William, Gribblebob and the children.

  CHAPTER 39

  As the screeching spirits came furiously towards them, Nils started to shake with the most unbridled terror he had ever felt, and he took a step back involuntarily. But at the same time as he stepped back, he felt his hand, the one that had Gribblebob’s book trapped in it, start to rise. He couldn’t stop it—in the same way as he couldn’t stop the shaking and he couldn’t stop himself stepping back in fear, he now couldn’t stop his hand rising. As it rose, he also felt himself start to walk—no, run—forwards, in front of William and the others. Faster than he would have believed possible.

  “Oh, look,” laughed Hobley Brown, “the tedious boy is so eager for a bit of magic in his life that he is just rushing to be ripped into. What a monotone life they live this side of the veil.”

  The rip-riders rushed forwards to Nils and the others, but somehow he felt sure of what he had to do. He knew it, in the same way he knew his parents loved him and that his sister would lay down her life for him. He held up his other hand, so both hands were raised out in front of him, and then he spread his fingers. The scrolling text spooled across his left hand and seemed to leap across the empty air to his right hand, creating some sort of shield of words between the two. The spooling letters and words and names moved quicker and quicker, jumping from one hand to the other then back again, like a tumble dryer of words held in the space in front of him.

  Faster and faster, a tsunami of text was rushing in the air between his hands, and Nils could feel its power. He could feel the magic the Great Goblin had used to bind the names in the book, the magic needed to act as a warning about the dark shadowfolk and unpleasant goblins contained within its pages. The magic of light that bound the darkness.

  As the rip-riders approached, the swirling rush of words acted like a kind of magical vacuum cleaner, starting to suck the wraiths towards it. Nils began to stumble as he saw the ragged faces and haunted eyes and wailing mouths of the ripriders come near him. He could hear the terror of the nightmares they lived in, could hear it echo in the space behind his ears. For just a moment, he started to doubt himself. He felt the dead-of-night loneliness of a real nightmare start to whisper to him. He felt the stirrings of a nightmare where his parents didn’t love him and his sister laughed at him as he lay floating away on a barge full of unwanted children, heading down a dirty-water canal towards a factory yard full of chimneys, towards coal mines and empty beds and useless rhymes. His hands started to drop, the whirl of words in front of him started to diminish, started to falter, and the rip-riders began to pull away from the suction force of it, shrieking in sad victory.

  Anna didn’t know what was happening, but she saw her brother—her brave little brother, pure of thought and good of heart—standing there facing the rip-riders, and she saw his arm drop, and she saw him stumble and falter, and she did what she always did when she saw her little brother stumble or fall or falter. She rushed to him, to help him up. She took the hand that had dropped, feeling it shaking slightly in hers, and gripped it tight. She felt the skin that was her skin, and the blood that was her blood, and the love that was her love, and she gripped it even tighter, and she felt how strong they were together.

  Nils gripped back. He felt his sister’s love—he felt her support and all the times she had been there for him—and the beginnings of the nightmare drifted away; the barge and the canal and the laughter stopped. Once again he felt his family’s love, and he raised his hand, still gripping tightly to his sister’s, and the maelstrom of letters and words and names grew quicker again, and blew and sucked, and the rip-riders shrieked and screamed as they were pulled into the reverse hurricane that Nils and Anna produced between them.

  All of a sudden the rip-riders were gone, and the swirl of words stopped—with a loud implosion, a huge pop—and Nils shouted, “OWWW!” and let go of Anna’s hand and fell to the floor. There was a sound like paper rustling, then a rainbow beam of text came flooding out of Nils’s hand and arced through the air towards Gribblebob’s waistcoat pocket, wher
e his empty Book of Unpleasant Goblins lay resting. There was a crackle of fire and paper as the beam hit, and then the goblin reached in and took out the book.

  “Got me book back,” he said, smiling, “and with a few extra names in, I’ll wager a badger to a pea.”

  “Nils!” shouted Anna, lifting up his head. “Nils, are you okay?”

  “Oh, pip-a-doodle,” said Hobley Brown. “That’s most disquieting.”

  CHAPTER 40

  William looked over and could see that Nils was okay, with Anna’s arm around him.

  “I wouldn’t call that dull,” he said, with the hint of a smile.

  Hobley Brown waved a hand dismissively.

  “Merely a sideshow,” he said, as he picked up one of the two small bottles. “Do you know what these are, William Wynn? Do you know what these little lovelies contain?”

  “Sure as a shoreline you’ll be telling us right enough,” said Gribblebob.

  “Oh, I will, you most unpleasant little goblin, I will. These pretty little trinkets hold a greater treasure than the blind fools who run this place know.”

  “What a blabbering baloney you are, a bore-in-one.”

  Hobley Brown glared at the goblin.

  “A very long time ago there was some… unpleasantness… this side of the veil, involving—”

  Gribblebob made a show of yawning loudly.

  “Well, never mind. Suffice to say that two warriors from our side broke the veil and put right what needed to be put right. But what they had to do brought them to tears, so as a remembrance of what they had wrought, and as a warning to others who came after, they collected their tears in these vials. They say the reflection of the horrors they saw are still visible in the tears. A spell was placed on them, to help protect this side of the veil, and they were left here. How perfectly lucky for me! All I need to do now is use their tears to wash this book. And then? Oh, and then…”

  Before anyone could say anything, Hobley Brown broke off the stem of the darker bottle and tipped the tears it contained over The Book of All Tomorrow’s Dreams, which steamed and fizzed and stirred as the liquid touched it.

  “Stop!” shouted William.

  “Oh, I doubt that I’m going to stop. I doubt that very much indeed,” said Hobley, smiling, and reached for the second vial.

  CHAPTER 41

  There was a flutter and flash of wings and claws and teeth, and a dark shape flew through the museum towards Hobley Brown.

  Rather than flinch from the oncoming creature, as most others would have done, Hobley merely smiled.

  “Oh, how darling,” he commented.

  Just as the furious, dark thing was nearly on him, he muttered something bitter and stale under his breath, and up out of what had been nothing but shadows and dust, up out of the echoed places that we only see out of the corner of our eye, rose something vile and vicious and violent, like a night-water shimmer, directly in front of him.

  As the glowing figure seemed to harden at its edges, William’s otherself of wings and teeth and claws and fury flew right into it. He completely disappeared for a moment, throwing out splinters of crackled light from the shimmer. There was a keening screech, wild and ancient, hungry and eager, and then the flying beast was spat out by the strange figure just as quickly as it had flown into it. The otherself fell to the floor and rolled over, then rolled over once more and it was William again, in his red frock coat and scuffed boots and long hair, looking shaken and drained.

  “My queen protects me, you see,” laughed Hobley, picking up the second vial.

  William, shivering, looked up and saw, there in the air by Hobley Brown, something he had never thought it was possible to see. It was Mara, the Rider. She looked like a thousand rip-riders in one. More solid than them, but still wraith-like, immaterial. Like a deep, dark pool of water at night. Half unseen and menacing. She glistened and glittered, an evil beauty. Her hair was long trails of that dusky sunlight that bleeds into shadow, her fingernails sharp thorns of black roses, her lips the siren call of drowning sailors. She opened her mouth to speak, and each word was made up of the screams of a thousand lost nights… ten thousand, more. William flinched from the sound. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew what Mara was saying: I win. I return.

  “Blimey,” said Gribblebob.

  To everyone’s surprise, most especially his, Bengt Arbuthnot strode forward, the broadsword in his hand.

  “Oh, how precious,” sneered Hobley at Bengt. “He thinks he’s a hero. I thought I could smell it on him. What a pretty sight he’ll be once my queen shreds him.” He looked away dismissively, back down at the second vial in his hand.

  Bengt thought about all his made-up names. About being brave. About defeating nasty bullies like Mandy Musgrave. He thought about the broadsword in his hand and how natural it felt. He could sense… possibilities within himself. He thought about what a hero like Jack Broadsword would say and do if his good friend William Wynn was lying beaten on the ground, if Mara the Rider was about to unleash a plague of nightmares on the land and if a smartly dressed smarm-merchant like Hobley Brown was about to open a copper vial containing the tears of a pure-hearted warrior.

  “No,” he said, “I won’t let this happen.”

  Hobley Brown threw back his head and laughed. “You? You won’t let this happen? I can smell what you are inside, but you’re still only a boy. A bland little boy with a big man’s sword. And I am Hobley Brown, servant to my queen—Mara the Rider, queen of nightmare, ruler of terror.”

  At this, Mara’s black light shimmered even darker, and she too seemed to be laughing.

  “Who are you next to her?”

  Bengt was actually rather tired of being laughed at. He was tired of Mandy and her gang and all those others, even the teachers sometimes, laughing at him, and—to be quite frank—he wasn’t going to take it any more.

  He searched inside himself. And he found Jack Broadsword. He found Jack, and he found Oscar Oakheart and William Summerksy, and perhaps most importantly, right there, right then, he found Bengt Arbuthnot.

  Bengt walked calmly forwards towards Mara and Hobley, who was holding the second vial tightly in his hand.

  “Who am I?” He ignored Mara and looked directly at the man holding the vial, who despite himself could not stop looking into Bengt’s eyes and seeing something that troubled him there. “Who am I?” he repeated. “I am Bengt Arbuthnot”—and he said his name proudly, probably for the first time ever in his life—“and I am…” He paused, and for a moment he wanted to say ‘I am Jack Broadsword’. And, just as he thought that, all those scattered memories, those echoes inside him, the feeling of something coming alive—somehow everything ignited in him and the words simply flowed out: “I am a pure-hearted warrior of the True Dreamers, and you are going to remember today as the day that I vanquished you and your petty little queen.”

  “Wh-what?” stammered Hobley. There was something about Bengt’s voice, something about the words he said and the way he said them, something about the way he was standing and the way he held the sword, that seemed to affect Hobley. It froze him and stopped him from opening the vial.

  Bengt took a step towards Mara, who shrieked and shook her blackness at him, her long fingernails clawing at the boy—to take his eyes, to rip into his cheek—but he simply raised the sword in front of his face and her nails clinked against the metal. She pulled her hand back in pain.

  “It-it’s not possible.” Hobley Brown started to shake a little.

  Bengt walked on, and again, from deep inside him came a voice that was his, but which carried the echo of another.

  “Mara, you may be queen of nightmare, but you only have power when you feast on the dreams of others. And dreams, real dreams, pure dreams—dreams of a better world and a kinder world—aren’t just dreams to be had at night in bed. Those are dreams to have in the light too, and those dreams will always, always be more powerful than nightmares. And do you know why?”

  Now Bengt had w
alked past Mara, ignoring her hissing and her bile, and was striding towards Hobley, who looked at him in shocked horror.

  “I’ll tell you why, Hobley Brown. It’s because nightmares exist in an absence of hope, but dreams—pure dreams, true dreams—they breathe in the air of hope, they flourish in the world of possibilities and opportunities and a longing for a brighter and a better tomorrow.”

  Bengt had reached Hobley. He leant forward and took the copper bottle, and Hobley’s shaking hand put up no resistance.

  “True dreams burn away nightmares, in the pure, beautiful knowledge”—and here Bengt laid down his sword, broke the top of the vial and held it to his lips—“that hope and belief and love will always vanquish fear and hate and darkness. And so today”—and now Bengt drank down the tears held in the bottle, so that they could never ever bathe the book—“today I vanquish you.”

  And with that, Mara was gone.

  CHAPTER 42

  When Mara left, the whole atmosphere in the museum changed—like when the lights go up at the end of a film and you see, oh yes, you were just in a cinema the whole time—and so now, oh yes, they were just in the Uppington Down Museum of Antiquities and Curiosities the whole time. On a Wednesday. Long after closing time.

  When Hobley saw that Mara was gone, he went to grab The Book of All Tomorrow’s Dreams, but Bengt placed his hand firmly on the cover, and Hobley stepped back. He looked into Bengt’s eyes and saw something there, maybe the hard truth of who he was reflected back at him, or maybe even a glimmer of the horrors in the tears from the vial, and he shivered some more, and whimpered, and turned, and went running out of the museum.

  Gribblebob moved to stop him, but William Wynn shouted faintly: “Let him go.”

  Anna and Nils stood up and went over to William, who managed to rouse himself to his feet too. They looked over at Bengt, who was standing with The Book of All Tomorrow’s Dreams in his hands.