There used to be a little book store in a small street, which branched out from another, slightly larger road. That road would eventually lead to a highway, though one had to navigate through a series of twists and turns to arrive there. Not many people know the existence of the neighbourhood, nor did they particularly care, seeing as the place was anything but fashionable. In fact, most folk who arrived there thought of it as particularly ugly and old-fashioned, a relic of a plodding past that they wished to forget as soon as possible. However, the various wise people in charge of the city knew that the area was best kept as it had always been, and blew raspberries at the unreasonable arguers who insisted otherwise.
The owner of the book store was oblivious to the political ramblings about his place of residence. Mr. Fennen was happy to live as he had done for the past twenty years, buying pasta at the corner store and stealing pears from his neighbour’s back yard. Every day, he would walk from his townhouse to the store, arriving an hour before opening time. This hour was spent in the mysterious top floor of the book store, where everybody presumed he was arranging books. Whether this was true or not was never confirmed by Mr. Fennen himself, who was content to have an air of mystery about him. “Life isn’t interesting when you know it all,” he had said to an inquisitive old woman, his mouth half full of jam doughnut.
Of course, children didn’t understand this. They always asked to go upstairs, then ran away before Mr. Fennen could answer. In truth, anybody was welcome to climb the stairs and find out, but they never did. Some thought it was a violation of his privacy, while others didn’t like the smell that met them halfway up. Mr. Fennen didn’t prevent anybody from solving the mystery, but fate and a series of coincidences did. Old Candice Feathers claimed that it was magic and that he was a powerful magician, but nobody listened to her any more. She was far too old and senile to be taken seriously.
That particular morning, the man was sitting on a pile of books underneath the counter. Being as short as he was, he was quite invisible from the front of the store. Thus hidden, he occupied himself by eating a mysterious, crispy snack he had found in the supermarket down the street. He was so busy with this vital stuffing-of-face that he didn’t notice the door opening, nor hear the jingling of the bells attached to said door. In fact, it wasn’t until the third time the newcomer had cleared his throat that Fennen peeked out from the top of the corner.
“Fennen Hall-psycho?” the man demanded. His voice was scratchy and loud, like the love child of a bad record and the sound of nails on a chalkboard. This, accompanied with his flawed pronunciation of Fennen’s surname put him in comparatively low esteem.
“Halcyk,” he corrected mildly. The man, like the majority of people he met, was larger than him, and he didn’t fancy a well-aimed fist to the stomach. “How can I help you?”
His visitor, however, did not answer. Instead, he made a strange gesture with his hands and began to mumble under his breath. A moment later, Fennen was conscious of a very familiar, electric feeling dancing down his spine. Before the situation escalated into something too dangerous for his taste, he pulled out a watering can and swung it at the man’s face.
When something of such epic proportions as Fennen Halcyk’s ten litre watering can comes in contact with one’s face at high speeds, one cannot help but pause one’s attempts at murdering him and instead be dumbfounded, then eventually fall over from the impact. That was precisely what the man did, much to the store owner’s relief. Once he determined that the man was well and truly unconscious, he dragged the body towards a small, nondescript door in a corner of the store. He opened it, allowing tendrils of fog, shaped like groping hands, to enter and swirl around the body happily. After a quick examination, revealing that there were no longer any attacking magicians in the portal, he threw the body in and closed the door, making sure to lock it behind him just in case.
Obviously, Old Candice Feathers was right about some things.
For fifteen out of the twenty years he had been living in that town, he had had to bear with constant attacks from the magical community. Sometimes, it was in the form of long talks on the phone with shady organisations, who insisted that becoming a member would be the best decision he could ever make. Mostly, however, people visited him, proposing ridiculous plans and treating him like some kind of object. They’d leave, dissatisfied, occasionally returning in an attempt to get rid of him, as if this would somehow help them achieve their goals. He sighed as he returned to his food, unfortunately no longer in the mood to eat it.
These forays didn’t annoy him because people were trying to kill him, but because they stirred up a past he’d rather forget. When he had first arrived, so many years ago, he hadn’t expected any reminders of what he’d done. And for a while, the world had behaved exactly as he had expected it to. Not anymore, he thought, watching as a woman crossed the street. They might have forgotten back home, but he wasn’t going to go there again. He had grown to love this new world, and besides, they didn’t sell instant mac ‘n’ cheese back where he came from.
“Mr. Fennen?”
Where had that voice come from? He turned around and put his ear to the door that had been, until recently, directly behind him.
“Help!”
Well, that settled it quite nicely.
“Flopett, didn’t I tell you to take the bus?”
The boy groaned. “I did. Now get me out, there’s a thing after me!”
Fennen frowned. He had taught his apprentice, Athanasius, about the various ‘things’ living behind his special doors, and expected to hear them addressed by their proper names. This wouldn’t do at all. Did he expect to become his assistant if he couldn’t keep his head in uncomfortable situations? He knew that, as eager as his deformed dirt spirits were, they didn’t have the equipment to hurt him. No, the boy wasn’t as well trained as he thought he was. They’d have to work on this again.
“What is this ‘thing’ you’re talking about?”
“Big, black, opaque,” Athanasius said hurriedly, his voice steadily growing higher and more nervous. “Large, rounded buttocks! Groping arm—argh! Get off!”
That didn’t sound like anything he had put in there. Confused, Fennen opened the door, and then, upon catching sight of the monster that had been molesting his assistant, shut it immediately—though not before pulling Athanasius to safety. He pulled a small, golden key out of his pocket and locked the door, then made his way upstairs, to the room where he kept all the books he didn’t want to sell.
It was remarkably empty. The room was square, with a small, grimy window on the right wall. On the table were two books: a leather-bound diary and a thick, heavy tome that had a distinctive, rusty sort of smell. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, and when he entered, Fennen began to cough. They were high, squeaky coughs, of the sort that are slightly alarming to hear. Athanasius was about to run upstairs to see what was wrong when another window appeared and let in a burst of fresh air.
Fennen flipped through the tome, which let out a different colour of dust whenever he came to another section. He poked it a few times and decided that some excess magic had seeped in and caused this curious... effect. He’d have to research it before he got rid of it—you always got rid of strange magic, even harmless stuff, because it could come back and bite you in the bottom. But that wasn’t what he was there for.
Was that ‘thing’ Flopett had seen really what he thought it was, or was it just a mistake? It had to be an obscure creature that looked the same, but was weaker. It couldn’t really be one of those, could it? Creatures of Earth, 2007 Edition cleared up all doubts he had at that point. It was absolutely, certainly and undoubtedly a Globbly. There is one thing a Globbly in a book store, even one owned by Fennen Halcyk, can mean, and that is trouble. Trouble of the most tangled and time-consuming kind. Fennen feared he wouldn’t be having a good meal for a while now.