The Tale of a Most Unwelcome Curiosity
(A Lore of the Boer’s Head Tale)
Written by P.H. Boer
It began, as most things do around here, with a sound that didn’t belong. Not the mournful creak of the sign swaying in the wind, not the slosh of stew bubbling behind the bar, not even the wretched cough of old man Vitch dying again in the corner booth.
No, this sound was wet.
And curious.
And distinctly not mine.
I was just polishing a mug… yes, a mug, not a glass, don’t ask… when I heard it. A sort of squelch-pop-crackle that came from nowhere and everywhere. The kind of noise that makes the hairs on your arms ask politely to leave.
At first, I thought it was something rummaging in the larder again. Perhaps another payment attempt… teeth, buttons, fingers. I’ve seen it all. But when I peered around the bar, mug still in hand, I saw them.
Three of them. Small. Wrinkled. Hairless. Glistening in the candlelight like improperly stored sausages. Eyes too big, mouths too wide, and ears that could double as sails. All of them blinking at me from atop the billiards table like it had personally offended them.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t recall inviting an infestation this week.”
The smartest looking of them (and I use that word generously) straightened its hunched back and made a grand, nodding gesture with a far too large top hat.
“We bring greetings!” it squeaked. “And also a little bit of fog. Sorry, Ious was chewing on a hallway again.”
The one I assume to be Ious, looked at me sporting a grin that threatened to shear his own skull in two, then gave a dignified bow.
“Hallo!” he squeaked, clambering onto the bar like he owned the place. “Is this the kitchen?”
Before I could respond, the other two with their eyes blinking in unison, noses twitching like they were sniffing for secrets, responded.
“Ious! You idiot,” one of them hissed. “This isn’t the kitchen. It’s a pub!”
Then out came a sound I can only describe as giggling, if you could call it that. Not the innocent kind either. No, this was mischief in its rawest form. Giggling like someone had replaced joy with a sack of nails and let it rattle loose.
“Ohhh,” the one they called Ious replied as he attempted to stifle his fit of laughter.
The third, who had a patch of jet black hair tied into a crooked topknot, sniffed loudly. “It smells deliciously dangerous. Let’s stay.”
They proceeded to introduce themselves like they were signing the guestbook at a condemned hotel. Ob, the self-appointed “Captain” in a top hat three sizes too big. Nox, the quiet one with a topknot and the kind of stillness that suggested calculation. And Ious, the gleeful chaos engine who kept shoving things in his mouth or simply licking them.
“Ious, get your tongue off the brass skull!” Ob barked. “It’s cursed!”
“Mmm-maybe I want a cursed tongue!” Ious replied, eyes crossed with joy.
They scurried like rats in a burning cathedral, tasting the air, poking at shadows, and asking deeply unsettling questions.
“Do ghosts eat the stew?”
“Can we un-haunt something that’s already haunted?”
“Who’s the saddest-looking meat sack here?”
(That last one was directed at a taxidermied head on the wall. I think…)
Eventually, they found a corner booth, my booth, if you must know, and began unpacking satchels of unknowable junk. Clock guts, melted candles, what might have once been a human tooth but now ticked like a watch.
“What are you?” I finally asked, voice like bark rubbed raw.
Ob looked up with mock offense. “We are entrepreneurs of entropy! Freelance philosophers of the in-between!”
“Squatters in the soul cracks,” Nox added, not looking up.
“We’re adorable!” squeaked Ious, juggling what I was fairly sure were a few dead fish and what appeared to be someone’s memories, bottled and fizzing.
I squinted. “You’re not local.”
“We’re from the Asylum,” said the smallest Ious. “We live in a shoe and a doorframe and a wall that forgot it was supposed to be solid.”
Nox held out a scribbled diagram, which was definitely just a rat with three Xs over it.
“They let you out?” I asked.
“They didn’t not let us out,” said Ob, the de facto leader.
I just stared. For once, I didn’t speak. Not a warning. Not a curse. Not even a sarcastic mutter.
Because nothing… and I mean nothing… in all my years had prepared me for gremlins.
Now, I’ve had patrons of all shapes and states of decay. The Corpse Bride who only drinks gin. The mirror-faced gentleman who can’t speak but sings lullabies in his sleep. Even Bill, who smells like pond rot and plays cards like a goddamn shark with a shell.
But gremlins?
Not once.
After some probing (and more than a few items going missing), I pieced it together.They’d breached the Pub through something they called the In-Between… It’s a sort of squirming network of not-quite-halls and misplaced floorboards that connects the impossible. Apparently, one of them had sneezed on a shadow and opened a passageway. Typical.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I told them.
“Neither is that,” Ob replied, pointing toward the fireplace. Where a guest’s reflection was now arguing with itself in reverse Latin.
Touché. You gonorrhea infested Chihuahua, touché.
As the night wore on, the regulars gave them a wide berth. Even Bill, who once arm-wrestled a plague elemental for the last bottle of inkwine, looked vaguely unnerved.
The gremlins were like fever dreams with legs. They told stories, yes, but none with endings. They borrowed spoons and returned them as forks. They played darts without a board, and the darts occasionally whispered insults as they passed your ear.
Things quickly went downhill.
Ious decided to see how many pickled onions he could fit in his mouth (23, before his jaw clicked sideways). Ob rewired the jukebox that I had forgotten was there, to play nothing but Gregorian chants backwards. Nox slipped behind the bar and began rearranging my bottles by how “alive” they felt.
The stew, of course, didn’t like this.
I warned them.
Twice.
The third time, the stew bit.
Ious lost a finger. Giggled. Grew it back and proceeded to lose it all over again.
But the worst part wasn’t the mess.
It was what stirred upstairs.
Room V13.
It knew.
It felt the breach, the laughter, the living chaos that poured through the In-Between.
At exactly 3:13 AM, a single knock echoed down the stairs. A slow, deliberate thing. Like a bone on wood. Followed by silence. The triplets stopped mid-chaos, ears twitching.
“We didn’t mean to wake it,” whispered Nox.
“You can’t wake it,” muttered Ob. “It’s always awake.”
I said nothing. Just reached for the bottle behind the bar labeled “In Case of Eventuality.” It was warm to the touch and smelled like rotten memories.
By dawn, things settled.The triplets had cobbled together some sort of apology from sugar cubes, moth wings, and what I believe to be a weasel tooth. They promised not to open any more doors. I promised not to throw them into the stew.
“We like it here,” said Ious, patting a barstool that now had tiny claw marks embedded in the wood.
“We won’t stay long,” said Ob.
They lied, of course.
They’re still here. Still popping in and out. Still wiring doorknobs to scream and collecting teeth under the assumption it’s currency.
But I’ve grown oddly fond of them. Like a rash that tells you jokes. Or a migraine that hums lullabies.
I even added them to the ledger, eventually.
Ob, Nox, and Ious.
Status: Uninvited, but tolerated.
Unwanted Payment: A single button, a jar of toes, and a promise they didn’t intend to keep.
Notes: Do NOT let them near the stew and please do NOT feed them honey.
~
The Innkeeper
Reluctant Host to Gremlins, Binder of Fraying Threads, Keeper of the Pub that Should Know Better
Tales from the Boer’s Head 