When I was only two steps away from her, Mum lifted her head into the shaft of light pouring in through the window and… I… I… I felt my knees buckle and nearly toppled to the ground.
‘AAGH—’ I barely had time to muster the beginnings of a yelp before she clamped her hand over my mouth.
Something was terribly wrong! The thing in front of me was NOT MY MOTHER. She looked like Mum – sort of. All the parts of her face were present, but not quite in the right places, as if she was wearing a slightly rubbish mask.
‘SHUT YOUR GOBBLE-GAP!’ a gravelly voice croaked.
Before my eyes, Mum twisted and distorted like a jellyfish in a blender. There was the sound of squelching and popping as a glimmer-spell was uncast, and the wonky woman suddenly transformed into two goblins, one standing on the shoulders of the other.
‘SURPRISE, SNOTFACE!’
I opened my mouth to scream again, but the goblin at the top was holding a portable prattle-peacer. Great-Great-Great-Grandad Abraham had shown me one just like it when we visited his office in the Briny Ballroom at the bottom of the sea.
The goblin flicked the little device on and I watched in shock as my voice was instantly sucked out of my throat and into it like a wisp of smoke.
‘That should do it,’ the stumpy thing snickered. ‘What’s the matter, overling? Lost for words?’
With no way of crying out for help, I turned to run, but the larger goblin at the bottom was ready for me.
‘Where’d you think you’re going, grubling?’ it barked, tossing a coil of golden rope from a hook on its belt. ‘Not so fast!’
Instantly, the magical cord wrapped round my middle, lashing my arms to my sides and stopping me in my tracks. The goblins yanked on the end, dragging me back towards them.
‘You can’t beat a good bit of enchanted trap-lace for takin’ prisoners, I say. That was easier than pokin’ pluglets in a pie.’
I spun round and got my first proper look at the pair of squat attackers as they leered at me in the gloom. The smaller goblin at the top jumped down to the floor and sauntered towards me.
‘That was exciterous!’ she cackled. ‘What now, Flott? Can we jab him in the ribblies?’
‘No!’ the larger goblin named Flott grunted, joining his accomplice. ‘You know the rules.’
‘Owww! How about just a few small wallops in the woo-woo?’ the female goblin whined sulkily. ‘We could boink him on the bonce!’
‘Officer Lickspittle, you know our orders,’ Flott huffed. ‘No jabbing, walloping or boinking! The boss wants him unharmed.’
‘Ugh!’ Lickspittle huffed. ‘FINE!’
My mind was racing so fast I thought I might faint. What was going on, and who was THE BOSS?
The lumpy creatures stepped further into the moonlight. They were an ugly pair, all right.
Flott was missing half an ear and had a shock of red hair tied in a knot on top of his knobbly green head. Lickspittle was wearing an eyepatch and her rusty locks were twisted in little wiry plaits that stuck out in all directions from her scalp like the upturned roots of a tree.
Both of them were dressed in smart soldiers’ uniforms.
‘Got you, you little skuz-lumper,’ Lickspittle hissed next to my ear. ‘You’re in for it now.’
‘Job done!’ Flott said, coiling the loose end of the trap-lace round his hand and elbow. ‘Let’s be off.’
My brain was a swirl of panic and fear. I struggled against the golden cord, but it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere fast. It seemed to be squeezing me tighter and tighter, the more I wriggled.
‘The boss is going to be so pleased with us,’ Lickspittle laughed, clapping her little hands. ‘I bet we get medals for—’
‘FRANKIE!’ my real mum’s voice suddenly called from reception behind us, making my heart leap into my silent throat. She must have wondered where I’d got to and come looking for me, ready to tell me off. ‘Where is that boy? Ooof, have you seen Frankie?’
‘HOP IT!’ the taller goblin grunted. ‘NOW!’
I heaved against the enchanted cord round my middle, trying to stay put. Right this second, Ooof would be pointing to the library doors, and any moment now Mum would see me and raise the alarm.
‘Don’t even think about it, you stinkly human!’ Lickspittle snarled. She flung the window wide open and before I even realised what was happening, the repulsive duo dragged me outside into the blustery night.
KIDNAPPED!
What did I tell you, my reader friend? I bet you could never have imagined in a squillion years at the beginning of this book that there was going to be a goblin kidnapping so soon, did you? You didn’t think for a moment that I’d be getting swizzled straight from our own library?
Well, I was – and it was gut-gurglingly scary.
I swear, I’d never experienced anything stranger in all my life than having my voice stolen by some curious magical contraption. It was bonkers! I didn’t once stop trying to holler as the goblins dragged me across the front lawn and along the pavement towards the pier, but absolutely no sound was coming out of my mouth. It was like hitting the silence button on the yell-a-phone when Dad was giving me a list of chores to do around the hotel.
* * *
Flott and Lickspittle hurried past the entrance to the aquarium with me stumbling behind. They might only have been as tall as my waist, but the goblins were stocky and brutish and much stronger than I was. I had no hope of stopping them – even when they ran STRAIGHT OUT INTO THE ROAD!
Cars braked and honked their horns, and one man on a bicycle veered off the pavement and zig-zagged down onto the beach with a loud CRUNCH.
‘Keep going!’ Lickspittle huffed, ignoring the angry yelling and beeping. ‘Nearly there!’
They hauled me closer and closer to the pier with its bright flashy lights and noisy amusements.
‘You’re insane,’ I screamed silently at the back of their heads as we approached the entrance with all the colourful posters and the little clock tower on top. ‘We’ll be spotted!’
You see, even though it was a drizzly evening, tourists were still coming and going in their hundreds. Everywhere I looked there were families and children buying balloons and buckets of popcorn or playing on the games to win fluffy toys and shiny watches.
Any second now, some poor unsuspecting human would turn and see a quarterling child with pointy ears and eyes the colour of copper pennies being yanked along by a pair of gnarled-looking goblins. How could Flott and Lickspittle be so brain-boogled with this many people about?
I quickly got my answer as I spotted our shadows on the wobbly wooden walkway in front of us. Instead of the two goblin officers, I saw Mum’s shape stretching out across the floor. The golden cord was still clutched in her shadow-hand, but instead of me at the end of it, there was the outline of a chubby little dog trotting along behind.
Those rottly gurnips had cast a glimmer on me too! Any humans who spotted us were just looking at a woman walking her pet pooch.
‘This way,’ Flott said as we hurried around the side of the great big arcade with ‘BRIGHTON PALACE PIER’ written on the front of it in huge sparkly letters, passing a row of food huts and jewellery stalls.
Where in the worlds were they taking me? I’ve walked up and down this place loads of times with Nancy in her magical disguise as a human-granny. Surely the goblins knew it was a dead end? If we kept going, we’d eventually fall into the sea!
‘Just over here…’
By now we were about halfway along the pier, and we stopped outside a green painted caravan with a rounded roof and little steps leading up to the front door. It looked a bit like the one Maudlin Maloney had lived in (before it got grunched by the Gundiskump), only this one was human-sized and much bigger. There was a large sign on the side of it advertising fortune-telling and predictions in;
‘This is it,’ Lickspittle snorted excitedly. She turned to me and grinned. ‘Oooh, you’re in such a bundle of bother, whelping!’
&
nbsp; I don’t think I could have been more confused if I tried. Had this repugnant pair stolen me from my home and brought me all the way out here in the cold to get my palms read?
The two goblins made for the caravan, pulling me behind them, but just when I thought they were going to head up the steps at the front, they ducked underneath it, vanishing into the shadows behind the spoked wheels.
‘GET A MOVE ON, QUARTERLING!’
I had to shuffle under on my knees, which was made a lot trickier by the fact my arms were still tied to my sides.
‘Shift your shufflies,’ Lickspittle snapped at me in a whisper and yanked me further into the gloom. ‘Lazy little lumper!’
By now, I didn’t know how to feel. My belly was gurgling with that horrible gloopy feeling I get right before something terrible happens – don’t forget, stuff like this isn’t altogether uncommon when you live at The Nothing To See Here hotel – but I also had the tiniest tingle of curiosity as I watched the bigger goblin knock on the wooden boards beneath us and a square trapdoor opening upwards, pushed by a long-fingered furry hand.
‘In you go, you gunksome little skwonker,’ Lickspittle said. Then she booted me right in the bumly-bits and I fell head first into the hole, screaming a silent scream.
THE GATEKEEPER OF BRIGHTON PIER
The last thing I expected to see when I opened my eyes after hitting a hard floor with a painful HUMPH! was a small dusty office, piled to the rafters with papers and scrolls.
I was lying on a little round rug, woven out of old fishing nets, that smelled of brine.
‘Welcome, weary travellers,’ an unfamiliar voice wheezed, snapping me back to my senses. ‘Welcome, all.’
Slowly I wriggled onto my back and found myself staring up at the open trapdoor in the ceiling. Around me stood my two goblin attackers, plus a third, much older creature with bristly whiskers and a clay pipe sticking out from between its teeth.
I gulped when its wide yellow eyes met my gaze through its enormous spectacles. It was a mumpie! I’d come across pictures of these ancient wisdom-imps in Grandad Abe’s books, but I’d never seen one in the flesh. They can normally be found minding their own business in the darkest recesses of old libraries and museums, as they live entirely on a diet of handwritten notes and letters. So what was this creature doing under Brighton Pier?
‘Interesting…’ the old mumpie rasped as it peered down at me. He raised a tufty eyebrow, then took the pipe out of his mouth with one of his four hands and scratched his head with the long mouthpiece. ‘I’m not sure anyone’s going to want to buy the likes of him, you know. Stinks of human! No one will eat that.’
‘We’re not here to sell the boy, Bambus!’ Lickspittle laughed.
‘He’s got business with the boss,’ Flott joined in.
THE BOSS? In all the chaos of being dragged along the pier, I’d forgotten about this mysterious character for a moment or two. Who was it? Who hated me enough to steal me away? My horrible pair of kidnappers might have been goblins, but they couldn’t be working for Grogbah, surely? He’d be back at the hotel right now, moaning and whining as always. The last time I saw that royal whinge-bucket, Grogbah was complaining that he kept falling straight through the sun-loungers by the pool.
Then there was Maudlin. She might have been in a fumerous temper, but I didn’t think she’d go to this much trouble. Besides, she’d NEVER associate with the likes of Flott and Lickspittle. Maudlin HATED underlings!
The only person left was my great-great-uncle. He couldn’t be the boss, could he?
‘Oh, blunkers!’ The mumpie flinched with surprise. He hobbled around the stacks of papers to the other side of his cluttered desk. ‘We’d better get you sorted, then.’
The goblin guards hauled me to my feet and shoved me closer to the mumpie as he busied himself, grabbing forms and folders from various drawers. There was a small sign at the front of his workstation that said, ‘BAMBUS BOATSWIG: M-T-T-T GATEKEEPER AND BORDER CONTROL OFFICER’.
Gatekeeper of what? There was nowhere to go! I racked my brains but couldn’t even begin to think what M-T-T-T might stand for.
‘Right,’ Bambus mumbled, snorting out a cloud of foul-smelling smoke. ‘You two first. Travel permits, please!’
The goblin officers both reached inside their uniforms and produced little folded booklets.
‘Look at your picture!’ Lickspittle shrieked, pointing to Flott’s permit as he opened it. ‘Haha! Your hair!’
‘It was taken a long time ago,’ Flott muttered, his green cheeks flushing pink. ‘It was fashionable at the time.’
They handed their booklets to Bambus, and the old mumpie stamped them one by one with a loud clunking contraption that looked a bit like a stapler.
‘That’s that,’ the mumpie croaked as he turned his watery old eyes on me. ‘Now, then, how about you, boy?’ He reached under the desk and pulled out a thick and tatty tome with crinkled, browning pages.
Opening the book with a laboured grunt, Bambus snatched a seagull feather quill from an ink pot on a nearby shelf and poised his hand, ready to write.
‘Name?’ he said, eyeballing me suspiciously.
I opened my mouth to talk but nothing came out.
‘Name, boy? I need your name!’
‘He’s been prattle-peaced,’ Flott said. ‘Gob-stoppered.’
‘I see,’ Bambus grumbled, peering at me over the top of his glasses. ‘Well, I have to put something in the logbook or your journey ends here.’
‘Ummm… His name is Disgusting Human Stink-Child the Eleventh!’ Officer Lickspittle cooed. She jabbed me in the ribs with her pudgy finger, then looked guiltily at Flott, who shook his head at her.
‘Dis… gusting… Human… Stink… Child…’ Bambus mumbled to himself as he wrote the words into his register, ‘the… Eleventh…’
He glanced back at me and fixed me in his ancient glare.
‘Age?’
‘I dunno,’ Lickspittle said. ‘He can’t be that old.’
‘SEVENTY-TWO!’ Officer Flott blurted.
‘Yep! That’s probably about right,’ Officer Lickspittle agreed. ‘Seventy-two!’
The mumpie wrote these things down without questioning. So much for being a wisdom-imp!
‘Purpose of visit?’ he asked, still puffing on his pipe.
‘Some good eatin’ – if there’s time,’ Lickspittle answered, patting her paunch. ‘I like the pickled gerbil tails from the market. I’ve always wanted to visit the Belcharium as well…’
‘NO, YOU PLONKLE!’ Officer Flott humphed at his partner. ‘We’re taking the boy to the boss for armfuls of vicious revenge. Great spiky loads of it!’
I swear, if my blood could have actually turned to ice, it would have at that moment. I couldn’t even begin to understand what was going on. Who wanted revenge on me? I was only a kid!
I tried my absolute hardest to stop myself, but the more I thought about it, the more an image of my great-great-uncle, Oculus Nocturne, crept into my mind. What if… What if he’d escaped his ice prison in the Himalayas and was employing these two barnacle-bonces to come and capture me? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d used brainless goblins to do his dirty work.
Oculus’s living-ghost, a spectril, was in a jar on the top shelf of our library back at the hotel, and he was powerless without it. If the blighter had somehow escaped, it would be the first thing he’d come searching for.
I grimaced when I thought of the horrible things my uncle might do to make me tell him where it was.
THWACK!
I immediately snapped out of my thoughts as Bambus Boatswig slammed an enormous stamp, with lots of swirly runes on it, down onto the register page.
‘That’s all of you sorted,’ he said with a satisfied smile. ‘Officers Flott and Lickspittle, and… umm… Disgusting Human Stink-Child the Eleventh, on behalf of M-T-T-T… the Board of Magical Tourists, Travellers and Trippers, I grant the three of you safe passage into Hovel.’
Bambu
s yanked on a lever next to his desk and there was a great jolt that rattled us right down to the bones. The whole office shook and the sound of grinding gears filled our ears as the wall behind us started to slide slowly away with a mind-shattering metallic squeal.
HOVEL
I turned and gawped as the back of the room rattled aside and my head nearly rocketed off my shoulders with shock.
Now, let me just remind you one last time that I’ve lived in the hotel my whole life, and I’ve looked at Brighton Pier every single whoppsy day of it.
Anyone who has ever laid eyes on the pier knows that underneath the wooden boardwalk, the rides, the flashing signs and the noisy arcades there’s… well… nothing! Nothing at all, except thousands of long metal struts that the entire thing sits on top of to keep it high above the water. Right?
WRONG!!
Before us, nestled amongst the iron legs above the churning sea, sprawled a… a… a town! I swear I’m not fibbing! You have my permission to throw this book in the bin and never read one of my stories again if it turns out I’m lying to you, my reader friend.
I stood there twitching in startled silence as a dizzying mixture of pant-wetting fear and exhilaration fizzed in my brain. I was looking at an ENTIRE TOWN packed with magicals dashing this way and that!
‘Move!’ Flott grunted. I struggled against him, but the stocky goblin grabbed me by the elbows and shoved me out onto a small landing beyond the confines of Bambus’s office walls.
‘Enjoy your stay,’ the old mumpie called behind us. ‘If you get a chance, pop into Blubber McGonk’s bakery. Her crustacean cakes and barnacle buns are to die for!’
With that, Bambus gave the lever a second tug and the wall clunkered back into place, leaving the three of us alone on the arrivals platform.
‘There we go,’ Flott said with a contented sigh like all the hard work was over. He turned to his partner-in-crime and nodded. ‘We’re safely inside the obscuring spells. Should be fine to give the whelpling his voice back.’
Fiend of the Seven Sewers Page 2