Excerpt: Black Dog

Black Dog Ch 10 <2K words>

Goblin Town wasn’t in a particular place as humans understood it. You couldn’t just pull out a GPS device and walk right up to it.

Goblin Town was like I was. It was fae and made of fae. If the world of humans was the stream that flowed along filled with fishes then Goblin Town was the tree trunk that had fallen over top of the stream.

An image of it could be picked up by looking at the stream but you couldn’t actually touch Goblin Town by touching the image. Goblin Town spanned the stream and allowed people to cross from one bank of the river to another. It was the short cut that fae used to cover vast distances.

This is why I headed for my hearth located at the former St Mary’s church. A fae’s hearth is their personal connection to the land of fae that extends through to the human world. It is the central point that we project our essence from the plane of fae to the human plane of understanding.

The hearth acts as a cut out that shapes our projection to a form that humans see and understand. My hearth is in the form of a dog which means that I am a dog in the human world. I can shift my orientation in the human world allowing the glamour to make me appear more human but I still have paws and not hands.

I don’t fear bullets, fire, or starvation but I do fear the destruction of my hearth. Without the hearth, I will soon start to fade away. I’d heard of this happening to many guardians in other cities where developers had decided a location needed to be redeveloped. Olympic committees were especially terrifying for this reason. They had taken guardians and other fae and snuffed them out like a person putting spit on a wick.

I was lucky that the church had been redeveloped and now the bar was where my hearth was located. Right under the first stone placed at the founding of the church.
It was there that could be found the skeletal remains of Pistol. Pistol had gotten his name from the way he jumped into a run at the sound of a loud noise. Pistol was a Labrador dog that had been a communal pet by the children of the town. It was too small to call it a city at the time. Someone from Europe knew a custom where a new church that was being founded was supposed to have a guardian. The typical choice for the guardian was a dog that was buried alive.

Pistol lacking any particular owner was chosen as the stray dog to become the new guardian for the church. The priest that officiated at the dedication service for the new church refused to have a guardian with the name of Pistol. It was for this reason that the priest renamed and blessed Pistol with the Christian name of Isaac.

I wonder if the priest ever thought of the fact that in the biblical tale, Isaac was not sacrificed to God.

Still, the bargain was made and I was chosen to take the role of the Guardian of St Mary’s congregation. Later on, I took the last name of Cain for myself in remembrance of Pistol.

I had met Pistol after his death. He had lived on as ghost for almost a dozen years. He would show up late in the evenings before the children were ushered away to their homes. He would still try to play with the children. Most of the children couldn’t see Pistol’s ghost which just frustrated the poor creature. After a while, he turned up less and less. Finally, I could not find him anywhere and figured that he had finally moved on.

The hearth remained. It was quickest and easiest way for me to get to Goblin Town. There were other ways in and out of Goblin Town but they were more for the non-fae that wished to visit our world.

Reaching the bar, the Spotted Dick, I used glamour to cover my presence. I went down the stairs and into the back kitchen. The kitchen had a storage room off to the side where most of the cases of alcohol and some dry goods were stored. It was in this room that I had a private small locker that I stored a few of my own treasures.

I retrieved one of those treasures now. If I was headed to Goblin Town then I was going to need something to trade. What I had to trade was cheese.

Not just ordinary cheese. This was Casu Marzu. Casu Marzu is sometimes referred to as Maggot Cheese because it is made by taking sheep cheese and encouraging the cheese fly to lay eggs on the cheese. The eggs hatch resulting in cheese maggots worming their way through the cheese. There are some people that remove the maggots prior to eating the cheese but there are other people that like the entertainment of having the maggots leap out of the cheese as they eat it.

We fae don’t need to eat. We can live for centuries with nothing but air but we do appreciate it when we can get something real to eat. We can live long lives which means the more strange and exotic the better that we tend to like it.

The Mares are fae that thrive on the taste of fear. The Tenders are fae that live on the taste of dew or pollen. Today, I was hoping to deal with the goblin Filthytoes that couldn’t get enough of Casu Marzu.

I grabbed my plastic container of the cheese with the bits of it weeping like milky sauce into the bottom of the container. I then re-oriented my essence to my hearth and transitioned to Goblin Town.

Goblin Town has suburbs in most major cities. They are the lobes of larger town. Anyone coming to Goblin Town must first enter it trough one of these suburbs.

I wandered through the outskirts of the town getting closer until I came to the punishment markers.

The punishment markers were raised by the King and Mayor of Goblin Town to remind people of the laws of the town and what happened to law breakers. They were a series of grotesque statues. Some were fae and some were other creatures from other planes like demons, angels, jinn, and things with too many tentacles, eyes, and orifices to have a name. They were all arranged here as reminder of who ruled Goblin Town and what awaited trouble makers.

Each of the statues showed the pose that they were in when they had been tortured to the second before death and then petrified. Goblins liked that sort of thing. Murder was a crime that even Goblin Kings and Mayors could be tried and sentenced by the Counsel of Nobles. Death was final and gave no hope of redemption.

It was considered fine to torture someone till they were almost dead and then turn them to stone. The victim left in the moment of agony for eternity and for all to see and witness what awaited similar law breakers. The victim turned to stone always had the possibility of being returned to flesh and healed. It just wasn’t very likely.
It always made my hackles rise when I walked through this garden of the macabre. It amazed me the many different ways that had been designed to torture different souls and applied to the creatures that lined the pathway.

I saw a work gang of fae and other creatures being escorted through the statues by a gargoyle. Two of the work gang were the pair of goblins that I had helped arrest earlier. It looked like the Mayor of Goblin town had been lenient today and ordered them to clean every statue along the way with their tongues. It should keep the work gang busy for the next month.

I kept walking.

Beyond the statues, the first homes could be seen. They all resembled small shod shacks like country cottages. They had small gardens of various plants growing around them. It was nice to feel the warmth of sunshine even if there was no sun in the sky.

Goblin Town had no day or night. It had places in perpetual light and places in perpetual gloom. Here it was light and after my night of fog it felt good to have my fur finally start to dry. A night of walking in the fog left me numb to the core. The light here was as good as sitting next to a roaring fire while drinking mugs of hot tea.

The more that I traveled from the suburbs of Goblin Town to the center, the more other travelers branched onto the path that I was travelling. They walked, stomped, hopped, flew, squirmed, and slimed along. Many looked somewhat human and many more had not a drop of humanity in their form. Some were as tiny as garden beetles and some were larger then elephants. They carried packs, pushed carts, hauled sleds, and hung wares from various portions of their anatomies.

Some would be headed to the Goblin Market to trade, some would be making deliveries, and some would be headed to further points and just passing through. The wares that they carried with them were as diverse as the owners. Cages were filled with things from darkest nightmares and jars bubbled with contents that seeped in myriad stains down their sides.

The small cottages along the pathway were now replaced by three story structures of stone and wood. Small pictorial signs hung from many of these buildings advertising specialties and qualifications of the owners.

Further along the buildings were four and five stories in height. The top floors were built out over the street providing protection against any rain that might fall. Various coloured awnings stretched from the windows of the upper floors forming a sky of coloured fabric that blotted out any of the original blue sky.

Along the way there were pathways that led into deeper gloomy pathways but Isaac avoided these. He would have to follow one of these soon enough but for now he enjoyed the gentle touch of warmth filling his essence.

Under the buildings, stalls were now to be found. Everything that the crowd carried, pushed, or pulled as wares could be found in these market stalls. Merchants watched for prospective customers to approach and bargain for dreams, emotions, services, and debts so black in nature that they would rot any paper they were written upon.

Within Goblin Town you could purchase all but the vilest of things. People seeking the vilest of things could still make connections with people that knew people that could provide these items.

I was glad that I was not seeking such things and hurried on my way. I finally came to the corner where I had to leave the lighted pathway and turn upon a gloomier trail. It wouldn’t be far but even as I took the first step, I could feel happiness leave my body. Joy was quick to follow.

There were forms of fae and non-fae that walked this pathway but far less then on the bright way. The merchants still sold from stalls but they snickered and salivated at the prospects. One flying beetle fae, likely a Tender, realized its error in coming down the dark way too late to avoid a long tongue that snatched it up like a bully frog.

I pretended not to notice. Goblin Town had rules but plenty of accidents could happen to witnesses before a case was brought before the King or Mayor of the Town. For many of the merchants here, I was just meat for the table. This is why I carried the Krakatau Special and hoped that I wouldn’t need it.

A dozen stalls more and I had arrived at Filthytoes’s shop.