“Well,” Charles said, “our names should keep us close together even if our interests don’t. Roll call. Lockers. You know.”

Richard liked him right away. Charles was nothing like the other boys from Goblin: the kids who tried so hard to stay cool. The kids who made more jokes than they did observations. The world felt youthful, open, and Richard noted a spark of inner electricity. Maybe the odd new neighbor could show him odd new things.

“I’m interested in the Blackwater River,” Charles said, without a qualifier. But Richard understood it was an invitation.

“Hang on.”

After closing the door, Richard asked his mom if he could show Charles the river.

“Be back in two hours,” she said. Then she pointed at him, her way of underscoring a rule.

Though he was far from high school, Richard grabbed his Goblin Marauders sweatshirt and joined Charles outside.

“I’ll show you around.”

“You’ll show me the Blackwater River?”

“No,” Richard said, already heading up the street. “I’ll show you Goblin.”

And so he did. And how fresh Goblin looked to Richard then! Through the eyes of a new friend! How new the very street he lived on! Even the stop sign shone bright red in the afternoon sun.

This is Goblin, Charles! My hometown. And now your hometown, too. Isn’t it something? Isn’t it magic?

“Coach Snow used to live there,” Richard said, pointing to the last house in the neighborhood before reaching Christmas Road.

“What does he coach?”

“What did he coach. Track and field. But the guy met a nasty end, they say. Found in pieces in a well.”

So many legends, so many yarns. Richard could feel the swell of the city building within him. Its history, its characters, its soul.

And much of that soul could be found in the rain.

“It’s a fact that there’s sixty percent more rain in Goblin than any city within a hundred miles. Some people say it’s the original sixty settlers, crying from up there.” Richard pointed to the blue sky.

“What happened to the settlers that they would cry?” Charles had asked.

Richard could feel Goblin working its magic on the newcomer already.

“Ambushed by natives. Dad says they had it coming. I don’t doubt it.”

As the boys walked up Christmas, as the very tops of the buildings of downtown came into view, Richard told Charles about how the sun set a full minute before all the neighboring towns because Hardy Carroll (the legendary unruly son of Goblin’s founder) lost a bet and, too afraid to ask his father for the money, agreed to pay in daylight. How the paved roads were all so bumpy because the city’s construction crews decided not to wait for the protestors to get out of the way. How the North Woods harbored Great Owls, Goblin’s very own endangered species.