Alfie Turner pushed his mop of brown hair out of his face and squinted up at the plaque. It was screwed haphazardly into the brickwork at the mouth of the alleyway. He rummaged in his jacket pocket and pulled out paper scrap his Uncle Vali had thrust into his hand.
The barely legible script looked like it had been penned by an ape riding a unicycle down a particularly rough road, but there could be no denying it matched the name on the tarnished brass plaque.
Furbelow’s Gimcrack Emporium
Item Needed: 1x Charlatan’s Lodestone
It was strange, though. Alfie was a born-and-raised Londoner. He took pride in the fact that he had only ventured outside of the sprawling confines of the great city a handful of times in his life. Farther south than Croydon, or north of Enfield Town, and his geography became hazy. He had spent plenty of time in Spitalfields, however, perusing the famous markets—both Spitalfields and Old Spitalfields, as well as Brick Lane and Petticoat Lane—and mooching around the beautiful Christ Church.
But he had never come across this little passage before. That was odd because he had ambled down the anorexic thoroughfare that led off from Artillery Lane to Widegate Street plenty of times. He had worked at a moody little wine bar there, shortly after turning eighteen. The place had done a killer charcuterie board, but it was the response of one old punter whom Alfie had inexpertly poured a beer for on his first day that had etched it indelibly into his mind.
“Blimey, mate, where did you learn to pull a pint?” he’d asked Alfie as he slid the glass of froth across the bar to him. “There’s more head on that than a Siamese twin!”
The wine bar was still there, although it wasn’t open yet. And here was this wonky passageway, looking for all the world like it had been there since the seventeenth century when the streets had been laid out for the Irish and Huguenot silk weavers, though Alfie would have sworn it hadn’t been there a few weeks ago.
He looked at the paper in his hand again and shook his head. He needed to pick up a Charlatan’s Lodestone for his uncle.
Alfie hadn’t the foggiest what that might be. Sounded like something out of Dungeons and Dragons. Or maybe some weird, new-age hippy thing that his uncle was currently into. He didn’t spend too much of his mental energy on it. He loved Uncle Vali dearly, but there was a lot about the man that he didn’t understand. Like why the guy refused to wear anything other than sandals, no matter the weather. Or why his preferred aftershave was a brand of furniture polish.
Alfie rubbed at his stubbly cheek as he looked down at the paper again. A raindrop landed on the page and made the ink of the abysmally scrawled capital F run. He stuffed it into his pocket. Maybe after he’d finished running this errand, he’d treat himself to a small plate of chorizo and a beer. If he was lucky and whoever was working recognized him, he might even get a discount. He could sit in the cozy bar and watch the rain trail down the windows.
Pulling the collar of his jacket up against the weather, Alfie walked into the mouth of the covered alleyway, his booted footfalls echoing off the cobbles.
When he emerged from the passage, he found himself in a tiny square. It was fronted on two sides by shops that looked like they had last been open when the vacuum cleaner had been on the cutting edge of technology. The third side was the one from which Alfie had just emerged, and the fourth was taken up by an establishment that could only be Furbelow’s Gimcrack Emporium. Even without the sign spelled out in faded gold letters that hung above the main window, Alfie would have known.
He approached the shop. There was no one else around—a rarity in a city of almost ten million people. As he neared the shop, with its dusty frontage filled with a selection of taxidermy, piled books, crystals, and peculiar knickknacks, he realized that it seemed quieter in here. It was almost as if the volume of the constant traffic noise and droning hubbub of millions of people living out their lives had been turned down.
Alfie wondered how the hell his uncle had heard of this place, and, again, what in the world a Charlatan’s Lodestone was. Uncle Vali was the black sheep in the family, so Alfie was unsurprised that the man had found his way to a spot like this. Even with the plethora of strange boutiques, market stalls, and wheeler-dealer entrepreneurs scattered throughout the area, somehow, this little place stood out.
Alfie climbed the two steps that led up to the shop door. The steps were bowed in the middle, worn into a shallow bowl by the comings and goings of countless feet. He stood for a moment with his hand upon the knob and braced himself for the almost inevitable meeting with a woman who was doubtless of the old-but-still-had-it variety, draped in shawls, and going by her new-age name of Cayenne or Cherish or Breeze. Then, he pushed open the door.
The bell jingled as he carefully closed the door behind him. Furbelow’s Gimcrack Emporium was the kind of musty, fusty establishment that looked to have stood like a mothballed boulder while the river of time slipped quietly by. The place was ensconced in that air of reverential silence that usually blanketed libraries, bookshops, and churches.
“Hello?” Alfie called, using that special muted voice people take on when they want to alert someone to their presence without making them jump a mile.
He stepped into the labyrinth of higgledy-piggledy shelves that made up the shop. There was no rhyme nor reason to the contents of the shelves—or the shelves themselves come to that. One teetering display, showing off an excellent (if that was your thing) variety of assorted animal skulls, was constructed entirely of ancient newspapers. These had laid stacked for so long that they had basically fused into one another.
“Hello?” Alfie called again, his throat tickling in the dry, dusty air. He swallowed. “Is anyone about?”
He slipped through a gap left between a crate of assorted leather-bound tomes and a suit of horse armor that had been displayed on an—apparently genuine—stuffed zebra.
“What is this place?” Alfie muttered, forcing himself not to jump around like a frightened kid when he thought he saw the zebra’s eye flicker in his direction.
He paused at a display case filled with a selection of hand-drawn maps; colored inks traced out on thick vellums. He had always been drawn to maps. The art of cartography called to him in some way. He stopped and peered at them. They were of nowhere that Alfie had ever seen, except for one which looked like it might be an ancient map of the London underground, although the cartographer had added in a twelfth line that was labeled as the Wyrmline.
“The Wyrmline?” Alfie muttered. “What the heck is the…?”
His voice trailed away as his eyes alighted on an open steamer trunk filled with nothing but a bouquet of crystal flowers. They were exquisitely made. Each petal of every flower looked as delicate and realistic as the real deal—except for the fact that the entire bunch lacked any color whatsoever. The glass was so perfect it almost bamboozled his eyes, looking more like air that had been sculpted into a solid than blown glass. A label sitting at the bottom of the steamer trunk, written in a flowing script, read, “CAUTION: Undeniable Flowers. Do not handle without requisite protection.”
Alfie moved on, his eyes roaming from one strange object to the next. There was a lot of bizarre stuff in the emporium certainly, but the towering racks and shelves were also filled with a collection of things that were little more than junk.
There was a small mound of pocket watches sitting next to a statue of some severe-looking winged monstrosity; a wooden bottle set to look like it was floating in the middle of a glass ship; a shelf full of spectacles so outlandish that they might’ve even been too much for Elton John; scrolls set in cobwebbed cubbyholes; a chandelier constructed of bones hanging from the ceiling; lamps and vases and copper teapots; dried herbs hanging in bunches from the rafters; rocks, sticks, and crystals littered about the place; and rugs and tapestries hanging from the walls.
Alfie stepped out into a relatively clear space near the back of the unassumingly large shop. He was just admiring the juxtaposition of a horrifying beaded curtain, depicting a pink unicorn frolicking in a field with a rainbow arching over it, exhibited next to a pair of captivating glowing orbs floating in their nook without any visible means of support, when someone cleared their throat. Without having made any conscious decision to touch the strange floating orb light fixture—if that’s what it was—Alfie snatched his hand back.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I would nay touch that if I were you, laddie. Not unless you wish your fingers not to occupy the same space and time as the rest of you.”
Alfie let out a sound that was somewhere between a cough and a gasp and spun around.
The frail man standing behind the counter, dressed in a flamboyant if slightly moth-eaten waistcoat, and regarding him from behind a pair of pince-nez, cocked his head thoughtfully to one side and glanced over at the floating orbs.
Alfie gathered himself, trying to get his pulse under control. He took a couple of breaths and looked at the man, whom he assumed was the proprietor.
He was one of those curious, otherworldly shopkeeping folk who believed that carpet slippers were the be-all and end-all of men’s fashion. With his papery skin, flyaway white hair, and matching sideburns, he managed to convey the impression that if you took him outside, hung him on the washing line, and beat him, he’d emit the kind of dust clouds usually associated with old rugs.
Behind him, Alfie saw a curtained doorway, which was swaying gently. He sniffed. As always in such places—tiny antique stores, one-woman sewing shops, and the like—it seemed to be that the owner had a pot of some pungent stew or soup simmering somewhere out the back.
Might be a haggis on the boil, Alfie thought. It wasn’t so much a bad smell, but it was one that was likely to take a couple of washes before it relinquished its grip on his clothes. And hair.
Alfie had gotten over his small fright by this point. He hitched a smile onto his face and approached the counter.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said. “I got distracted by the… Whatever that thing is.”
“Aye, the wisplight, I saw,” the old man said, nodding sagely. “I quite understand. Hard to resist the call, lad.”
Alfie frowned. Now that he came to think about it, there had been an element of a call to his desire to touch the thing.
“It was a beggar of a thing to capture, let me tell you,” the old man finished.
“Uh, right,” Alfie agreed politely.
Capture?
Clearly, this was part of the old geezer’s sales patter. He probably had a box of the lamp things out the back that he’d ordered from Alibaba.
“The name’s Claude Furbelow,” the man said, gesturing around the shop, “of Furbelow’s Gimcrack Emporium.”
“Alfie,” Alfie said in return. “How do you do?”
“Very well, indeed, thank you for asking,” Furbelow replied with old-school politeness. “How might I be of service, sir?”
Alfie stuck his hand in his pocket, retrieved the scrap of paper given to him by Uncle Vali, and placed it on the counter.
“My uncle sent me to get one of these.”
Furbelow squinted through his pince-nez.
“A Charlatan’s Lodestone?” he muttered to himself, tapping the paper thoughtfully with one cadaverous, nicotine-stained finger. “I wonder what the devil he wants one of those for. Who’s your uncle, laddie?”
“Um, Vali. Vali Turner. I’m not sure if you’d remem—”
“Ah, say no more, say no more, laddie. Now, I understand.”
“You do?”
“Oh, aye.”
“Well, that makes one of us at least,” Alfie said.
“Let me see, let me see,” Claude Furbelow said to himself. “I know I’ve got one o’ these knocking about somewhere. Might take me a moment to locate the beggar, though. Why don’t you have a poke around the place while I track this lodestone down—not literally, o’ course. Might be worth singing out if you fancy taking a closer look at anything.”
Alfie nodded and turned in an aimless circle. There was certainly a lot to look at.
“Why don’t you try on the hats over there, laddie?” Furbelow suggested. “I shan’t be too long. Might be that you’ll find something for Christmas, eh? Get ahead o’ the game early. Your uncle loves a good hat after all.”
Alfie’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Really? I’ve literally never seen him wear one.”
Furbelow returned his puzzled frown and raised him a quizzical eyebrow.
“Don’t be daft, laddie,” he said. “How can you never have seen your uncle wear a hat?”
That sounded almost like some kind of metaphysical, double-sided question to Alfie, coming from a stranger. This was quickly turning into one of the most random conversations he had been a part of in recent memory.
“I—” he started to say.
But Furbelow had already turned away and was rummaging through a rusty filing cabinet, shaking boxes and tossing them aside.
“They’re over there,” he said vaguely, waving a thin hand over his shoulder.
“What are?” Alfie asked.
“The hats, lad, the hats!” the strange old man said with a bite of impatience. “Over there by the collection of tablets focusing on sixth-century Egyptian mummy resurrections.”
Alfie walked to the corner of the shop that the old proprietor had indicated.
Wait… Mummy resurrections? he thought, the old man’s words bouncing around in his brain like a bunch of dropped rubber balls. What’s the old guy going on about?
This little shopping expedition was fast morphing into one of those experiences that would require a mental debrief afterward. Alfie thought of the beer and chorizo that awaited him at the wine bar back down the passageway. They had seemed like a treat before. Now, after this, they struck him as more of a necessity in the quest to restore his equilibrium.
Furbelow’s hat collection was not hard to find. Assorted headgear of every description was piled in a tottering stack about seven feet high in the corner of a changing area. The changing area was little more than a couple of booths with dusty red curtains fronting them.
It didn’t take Alfie long to find the most ridiculous head accessory in the place: a pair of extremely fetching red feather earmuffs.
“Very sexy,” he snorted, picking them up. “Say goodbye to your bachelor days, Uncle Vali.”
Chuckling, he slipped them over his own ears and gave himself a critical once-over in the tarnished mirror.
“Not bad,” he said. “They’d go well with—”
“With a saucy G-string or something of that kidney,” an impossibly high-pitched voice said in his ear.
For the second time that afternoon, Alfie felt a cry of alarm rise unbidden in his throat. This time, however, he managed to swallow it.
Slowly, he turned. There was no one behind him. This was a relief as the changing room was small, and anyone sharing it with him would have been practically perching on his shoulder.
He pulled the velvet curtain back with a finger. Furbelow was standing on a rickety stepladder in front of the counter, his arm buried to the shoulder in a small cupboard. He was muttering to himself, clearly not paying Alfie the least bit of attention.
“So, it’s the earmuffs,” he said aloud to himself, his own voice slightly muffled in his covered ears. He pulled them off and examined them. There was a handwritten label attached to them that he had assumed was the price tag. When he examined it though, he saw that it read, ‘Level 30 Fire Enchanter Item: Embermuffs: sure to keep the ears warm and fire spells red-hot!’
“Right…” Alfie said, shaking his head bemusedly. He hadn’t realized this shop catered to the cosplay crowd. That kind of made sense, though, now that he came to think of it.
He couldn’t see a light to show that the earmuffs were turned on in any way. There was no sign of a battery compartment. He pulled out his phone and checked for a Bluetooth signal. There was nothing. In fact, his phone didn’t even have reception.
That made little sense. He was in the middle of London, standing in an old building that looked like it’d be lucky to have any insulation, let alone constructed from material that could block a 5G signal.
He put the earmuffs back on.
“There’s some kind of electronic gimmick to them is there?” he muttered.
“Gimmick?” the earmuffs said. “What’s that when it’s at home, then?”
Alfie prided himself on being a level-headed, rational guy. He knew there were a lot of wacky gizmos out there. There were systems coming on the market that could emulate conversation. Even his old man had gotten aboard with smart-home devices that you could ask for the news or the football scores.
“What is this, some kind of AI headgear?”
“AI?” came the squeaky reply. “Look ’ere, mister, I’m not sure what you’re on about, but—”
“I mean, you’re artificial intelligence,” Alfie said, tapping tentatively on the earmuffs.
“You want to be careful, mate, tellin’ people their intelligence is artificial. What makes you think that your intelligence is the ruddy genuine article, eh?”
“Amazing,” Alfie breathed.
“That’s more like it,” the earmuffs said approvingly.
“How much do these things cost?” Alfie asked aloud. He wouldn’t have thought this odd shop would‘ve stocked tech gear like this. His dad would get a real kick out of them.
“You want to buy ‘em? Cor, you’re weird, mister. Rather you than me. Old Furbelow’d probably try and wring at least a tenner out of you for them if he knew you were keen.”
“Ten quid?” Alfie repeated vaguely, tapping the other earmuff experimentally.
“At least,” the earmuffs squeaked. “And would you mind quitting with all that tapping? I’m rattling around like a pea in a whistle in ’ere.”
Alfie was still trying to figure out how the mysterious headphones-cum-earmuffs worked when the tinkling of the front bell was drowned out a nanosecond later by the door crashing open with an alarming bang.
“I say!” Claude Furbelow snapped, as only a Scotsman could snap. “What in the deuce is the meaning of all this racket?”
Alfie froze as the angry, frantic voices drew closer and closer.
There was a smashing sound, a ringing clatter that sounded very much like the horse armor had just been sent flying, and then a couple of desperate-looking geezers barged into the open space in front of the counter.
Alfie, peeking through a gap in the velvet curtain, saw the side profiles of two men—one short and mean-looking, the other even shorter and even more mean-looking. They were both wearing clothes that had definitely seen better days, great big boots, and bizarre sunglasses despite the fact that it was overcast outside.
Their appearance alone was not enough to pin Alfie’s gaze, though, not in a city as rife with the eclectic and grungy as London. No, the thing that caught and held his attention was that one of them was brandishing a small, gray-skinned doll in his hands.
The gray-skinned doll, which the foremost man was holding in the manner of a gangster cradling a pump-action shotgun, stirred.
“Oooh,” the earmuffs said, not unhappily, “they’ve got a loaded baby gorgon.”