I have always lived in an imaginary world. Ok, I live in the real world with everyone else; I have a job, pay taxes and do all of the usual boring things. But added to this are layers of unreal, all from the depths of my strange and overactive brain.

    This started as soon as I could talk when Albert, an imaginary friend, came to stay. And I mean to stay. One day I was an only child, the next, I had a brother who had popped out from nowhere. To me, Albert was real and fully three dimensional, someone who had the same needs as I did.  If I needed feeding, lifting on to the bus, playing with and being kissed goodnight; so did Albert; except I was the only person who could actually see and hear Albert. To the rest of the world, and especially my poor mother, he was a void, an empty space that I would interact and hold conversations with.

   

    Actually, I did not make it that simple for my family and those people who came in contact with me. I insisted, usually with much screaming, that they also interacted with Albert; he was real and did not deserve to be ignored. And so, a whole progression of Aunts, Uncles and Health visitors all had to talk to Albert. Albert had his own place at table, his own bed, and definitely had to be lifted on and off the bus. My poor mother went along with this ethereal creation for some peace and quiet.

    Albert lived with my family for two years, and then one day he left. One moment he was there and the next he had gone.

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    Life would have been simple if Albert had been, as most people claimed, a figment of a bright lad’s imagination. “He’ll grow out of it… Lots of kids have pretend friends… Ah! No harm will come from it…” Except Albert was real, and so were all the other people and creatures I watched as I grew up.

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    I am Pete Marsh. I live with my wife Kate, in a normal 1970’s semi, in a normal road, in a far too normal town stuck in the middle of rural Nothing-shire.  It’s the sort of place where life happens, but you would have to look really hard to actually spot it happening. Days can slip past, one after the other, all virtually identical to the ones before. Every now and then, when you have to write the date, you realise a whole month has vanished without a trace. Causing not even the faintest ripple in the flow of history. This was me, the owner of a struggling bookshop, until that fateful morning.

    Monday mornings are always a problem, this particular Monday doubly so. The weekend had been tough. Kate and I had spent most of it arguing about my appalling DIY skills. So Ok, the shelf had not been exactly level; perhaps I should have cleaned up the mess I made and yes I would have to call someone to make the washing machine work again. But it wasn’t that bad! I was kidding myself – it was far worse. So, on a dull morning to match my mood, I walked off to the bookshop. 

    The bookshop itself is a long story. I am an avid reader, spending far more time with my nose stuck in a book, rather than most other things. My knowledge of current affairs, TV programs and celebrities is almost none existent. My love of books made it preordained that my Saturday job as a teenager would be in a bookshop. The only bookshop in town was Benson’s. Benson’s lived in a ramshackle old building that was built in the medieval period, then added to in a random fashion ever since. It was a confusion of small rooms, on different levels, connected by narrow staircases and creaking passageways. Inside each room were rickety shelves, piled high with dusty, second hand tomes covering every subject known to man. 

    Mr Benson, the owner, was the fourth generation of the Benson family to run the shop. It was a standing joke by regular customers that only the first Benson knew what a duster was! I joined the staff, well became the other member of staff, at the age of 15, starting my eternal battle of sorting the stock into some sort of order and herding dust into manageable heaps. 

    I worked in the shop throughout my sixth form years, now being allowed to price and sell the piles of books Mr Benson purchased on his trips around the local area. I moved away to university where I studied history, specialising in the English Civil War. I am now a total expert on the political chaos following the beheading of King Charles I, and the rise of the Commonwealth under Cromwell. And therefore I was totally unemployable!

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    After moving back to Middlewich, and spending a few months on the dole, I was glad to accept an offer by Mr Benson to join him full time. Mr Benson was now getting a bit infirm and clambering around his assault course of a shop, lugging books, was now impossible. The shop needed a stronger, younger back: Mine! So Pete and Benson’s became an item. Over the next eight years, I slowly took over the day to day running of the book shop. I took it into the 21st century by selling rare books over the internet and, much too old Mr Benson ire, tidied up the kerbside appeal by selling popular fiction. I’m not sure he ever worked out what “Chick Lit” was. I use the past tense because one day he was gone. One day he was well and healthy and the next day he was dead. 

    I expected the funeral to be a very quiet affair. As far as I knew Mr Benson had no family, and no real friends. I guessed a few regulars from the shop would make an appearance, but I fully expected the mourners to be Kate, me and the vicar. It shows you should never make assumptions. The funeral was packed. People had come from all over the country. 

    A wall of sombre, dark suited men and women arrived, quietly paid their respects, shook my hand and left. They didn’t even stay to help with the sausage rolls and sandwiches that Kate had provided back at the shop. It was a strange experience all around. The few of us who toasted Mr Benson at his wake speculated who the grey folk were, but apart from a few wild and weird guesses, we were none the wiser.

    I fully expected to be asked to pack up the shop and prepare it for sale, and was not surprised to be asked to visit Dodds & Blott solicitors in Middlewich, a few weeks later. I was stunned to learn that I was to inherit the shop, on the proviso that it continued much as before. Kate even teased me that I was now the honorary fifth Benson.

    So on that dull Monday morning, I wandered down to Middlewich to open my bookshop. Unlocking the front door and picking up the avalanche of junk mail, which appeared to be solely junk food advertised in glossy, lurid colours, I glanced around. Something felt odd. Everything appeared to be how it should, yet somehow felt different. I switched on the display lights and turned up the heating as I began to shiver. As the shop brightened and warmed up, the feeling of strangeness diminished but did not entirely disappear. I could not get out of my mind the idea that someone else had been in the room.

 

    Having my first coffee of the morning, I started to unpack the new paperbacks and place them alphabetically on the shelves. Ok, I will admit, I’m a bit OCD. Actually, I’m really OCD. This can be an asset when you run a bookshop, and you spend your days putting back books that customers have lazily misplaced from their proper places. But today it was like some blind, dyslexic moron had taken all the books on the shelves and stirred them with a big stick. Meg Cabot books were next to Nicola May, Jill Kargman was upside down, while poor old Alice Page’s books were fore edge out. Someone was playing silly devils. None of the regular customer I could think of would do such a thing, but I made a mental note to keep a closer eye on people browsing for too long.

    Monday mornings passed as Monday morning do. I spent some time doing some admin, sorting out the stock, and making a few sales to people who seemed to have wandered in by accident, and were too embarrassed to leave without purchasing anything. The usual clue being their quick scan of the sale pile, a swipe of their bank card, followed by a hurried departure.

    Lunch was a microwave pasta thing, while reading the emails, and checking the online orders. The front of store selling popular fiction and cookbooks kept the shop solvent, and paid my wages. The vast and rambling collection of old books, crammed into the remainder of the higgledy-piggledy rooms provided the fun and challenge, and very occasionally a financial bonus. I scanned through the online orders and queries, spotting one that stood out. Fyfe's Materia Medica published in 1903 was not an everyday order. Fyfe’s manual was intended for the physician in practice, with clear and rather precise indications for therapeutic use. It was a turn of the century, how to make medicines handbook for the local doctor. You could buy a modern pocket edition from Amazon for about £25, down load a free ebook from the net, or buy an original (slightly foxed) version from me. Ok my version was a touch more expensive, but you are buying a hundred years old piece of herbalist history. 

    I did not know who this collector was, but this one sale would make my week. A quick stock hunt via the computer could not find the book; which meant I would have to visit the Benson zone. This was my name for the rooms containing the pre computer collection of books purchased decades ago by the shop’s previous owner. The Benson zone occupied the most cluttered inaccessible parts of the shop. The yellowing index card told me that the book should be on shelf twelve in the upper attic. A room as high up and as far away as it could possibly be. Not somewhere I visited very often.
 

   I found a whole bunch of minor jobs to put off my visit to the nether regions of the upper attic for as long as possible. So by the time that I started to climb the first set of stairs dusk was starting to fall, and my way was light by a dingy 40 watt bulbs. This gave the stairs and following corridor a sepia hue sliding into dark shadows, as you looked into the distance. The bookshop had evolved over centuries and to reach the upper attic I had to weave back and forth through twisting corridors, sometimes going down into a room before rising up the staircase to the next level. As I traveled deeper into the upper reaches of the shop the rooms became smaller, and packed with overloaded shelves. Squeezing between two sagging units to get to the next door I stopped. My eyes were level with one of the wooden shelves. This was odd. The dust that I had battled with for years, and recently admitted defeat to was missing. The shelf was clean, almost polished. I rubbed a finger along its edge. The end of my finger left no mark. I rubbed my fore finger and thumb together. I had picked up no dirt or grim. 

    I now looked carefully at the books. In this part of the shop they were stored in any available space. My OCD alphabetised world did not extent this far. The largest books were on the bottom shelf, and as my eye scanned right; they were ordered in decreasing size. This continued onto the next shelf up. The books continued getting smaller and smaller as I looked right and then up. As I suspected the smallest book was on the highest shelf, at the right hand end. An odd prickly feeling made me turn around. This bookshelf opposite was also immaculately clean; but this time sorted by colour. I stepped back to view a rainbow of bookends, running from the dark blues to the red end of the spectrum.

    I was now starting to feel a bit confused. I had not sorted the books this way. I didn’t even bother to dust the Benson zone. Someone else had been up here. Someone… Who… Kate would help flog the odd paperback at weekends, when I was busy, but as far as I was aware I was the only person who ever came up here.

    I pushed open the next door and reached around for the light switch. Having flicked it back and forth, I accepted that the light was not coming on. For a moment I considered turning back. Somewhere in the junk drawer downstairs was a torch. I could get that and then return. I stood in the doorway hesitating, when I heard a noise. Footsteps. Quiet and cautious footsteps, but footsteps. They were coming from behind the door, on the other side of the darkened room. This door was slightly ajar and I could see a dim strip of light down its edge. I stared at this door. A shadow crossed the strip of light. I continued to stare. Something was being pushed or dragged across the floor, followed by a load thud. 

    “Thou roguish crook-pated baggage!” growled a voice.

    Someone was in my shop. They were stealing my stuff. Thoughts of the torch vanished as I rushed through the room and slammed open the door. I tripped and fell flat on my face! The buildings unusual geography having caught me out. The floor of this room was lower than the one I had left. I pushed myself up onto all fours, gasped for breath, focusing my eyes to look ahead.

    A small man, about four foot tall with a rotund body, skinny limbs and yellow eyes was staring back at me. He was in the process of picking up a large leather bound tome from the floor. The little man blinked his large cat like eyes, raised a hand and pointed at me.

    “Ungesewen” he hissed. He blinked again, as a look of confusion crossed his face. He straightened up and made a complicated gesture with his fingers.

    “Ungesewen!!!” he said again. 

    We held each other’s stares for a few seconds

    “Canst thou see me?” asked the strange little man. I nodded slowly. He turned tail and ran.

    I scrambled to my feet and gave chase. His short legs may have slowed him down, but every time I got close, he would bounce off a book case and change direction. I grabbed at him a couple of times, but he twisted out of my grip, and dived under a desk. I crept up slowly, with my arms spread wide, to stop him darting past me. I could see his eyes watching me carefully from the darkness. I edged closer; both of us watching who would make the first move. Judging the distance I dived under the desk reaching for where I though his legs would be. I clutched at air, as he skipped back out of the way. I crawled forward only to have him use my head as a step up onto the desk. I heard his footsteps pass over me, followed by a thud as he jumped off the other side. I was now seriously angry. I was being made a fool of by elderly midget, with curly toed boots and a beard. 

    Shaking a dull throb from my head I climbed out from under the desk to see my adversary running back through the room I had just entered from. I lumbered after him. Back down the darkened room, he was heaving on a bookcase, swinging it open like a door. He darted through the small gap, just before I crashed into the shelves, hammering it shut.

    My mind struggled to accept that there was a door hidden behind the books. I had never even known it was there. How many times had I passed this point without ever realising? The bookshop has a secret door? I run my fingers up and down the edge. Half way up was a smooth round hole. In the dark it could easily be mistaken for a knot in the wood. I pushed my forefinger in to the hole. Knuckle depth something clicked. I pulled on the bookcase, swinging it open to reveal a narrow set of stairs twisting downwards. These looked ancient compared to the rest of the shop. Light was provided by candles in lanterns hanging from the walls. 

    I took a couple of heavy books off a shelf and used them to wedge the door open. I didn’t fancy being trapped. Quietly and carefully I started my descent. This was beginning to feel a bit Dungeons and Dragons. I mean, it looked like I was chasing a goblin. I paused to think. The thief did look a bit like a fantasy character, but a goblin. Nah! That was too weird to be true. 

    I followed the stairs down a short distance where they ended in a stone arch. I peered into a circular room. My small thief was cramming books and stuff from a chest into a leather sack. The room was a bedroom. As well as the four poster bed and chest, there was a wardrobe, a tall angled mirror, some wall hangings, but, importantly no other exit. The little man was trapped in the circular room. This time I was not going to let him slip past me. He hefted his sack onto his shoulder, ready to make his move. He stepped back and I stepped forward. I countered each move he made, slowly driving him back across the room towards the mirror. 

    With his back to the mirror he stopped and straightened up.  He stamped his right foot twice and shouted “Ingang”; and stepped into the mirror. The silvered surface slowly flowed over him as he sank back into the surface. My thief was escaping me into a mirror. I threw myself at him, grabbing an arm. Half engulfed he tried to pull away, his arm away drawing my own into the silver surface. There was a ripple, followed by a feeling of icy pins and needles. I refused to let go, over balanced and tipped through the mirror. An icy pain swept over my body and I passed out.