The Goblin attack at the J.W. Wells & Co. office turns an ordinary end to the working day into Paul Carpenter and Sophie Pettingell’s first direct confrontation with the creatures behind the firm’s strangeness. Paul’s hurried, improvised resistance cannot by itself secure Sophie’s safety: his efforts scatter the Goblins, then give one of them an opening to seize her. Her rescue depends on Dennis Tanner, whose calm intervention reveals that the office’s apparent disorder is part of a supernatural world he already knows how to manage.

The office before the attack

Paul and Sophie are new clerks in a workplace whose instructions are delivered in the same brisk, procedural manner as any office routine. On Paul’s first day, Dennis Tanner presents him with two bundles of contract papers and offers him the choice of reading them or signing where the initials have been marked. Paul signs both copies; Dennis signs them in turn, locks one in a drawer, and moves straight on to explaining the job. The scale of the paperwork, the locked drawer, and the quick transition from employment terms to duties make the firm’s bureaucracy tangible before its supernatural nature is disclosed.

Sophie’s subsequent induction supplies a more detailed catalogue of the office’s rules. Paul is assigned the reference PAC; staff have set break times, restrictions on the third-floor toilets, specific routes for sending work to the printer, and procedures for signing out supplies. She warns him not to switch off the computers and reminds him that the strongroom keys are kept at reception. Among the small items to be returned to its proper place is the Long stapler. In the attack, this routine piece of office equipment becomes one of Paul’s improvised means of defending himself.

The immediate crisis begins when Paul and Sophie discover that the street door will not open, despite Sophie’s efforts with its bolts and Yale catch. Paul suggests that Dennis may still be inside because he once found him at work before the door had been unlocked. They go to Dennis’s office, where they find papers scattered across the floor and furniture displaced. Paul also notices gaps in the collection of tomahawks displayed on the wall. The mess and missing weapons point toward trouble already underway, but Sophie presses on rather than pausing to investigate.

The first confrontation

As Sophie approaches the office door, Paul hears footsteps in the corridor and recognizes something distinctly different from an ordinary person running: a quick, scampering approach. The door flies open and knocks Sophie down. In the doorway stands a Goblin wearing a leather jerkin, a rusted chain-mail shirt, and an ill-fitting steel helmet. It carries a short axe that Paul recognizes as probably one of Dennis’s missing tomahawks. A second Goblin, armed with a broad-bladed spear, appears behind it. Their arrival makes the office’s earlier oddities concrete: the weapons have not merely gone missing, and the threat is not a human intruder.

Paul is frightened, but he also senses that moving or breaking eye contact would be dangerous. He cannot explain this knowledge; he acts on it as an immediate instinct. The two Goblins and Paul remain fixed in a tense stare until a third Goblin rushes into the room and breaks the standstill. Paul shouts, stamps forward, and tries to drive the creatures away. The response works at first: all three retreat, and the spear-carrier drops its weapon. But the retreat becomes disorderly. The unarmed Goblin backs toward a corner, then encounters Sophie as she is getting up. It grabs her hair, holds a knife beneath her chin, and uses her as a shield.

Paul understands that a shout or sudden movement might provoke the Goblin into hurting Sophie. He therefore stays still as it backs through the doorway with her. He waits until its footsteps have receded before moving, then takes the abandoned spear. His decision not to pursue the Goblin with a sudden attack is a crucial reversal in the scene: the boldness that had driven the creatures back must now give way to restraint, because Sophie’s immediate safety matters more than a show of force.

The struggle in reception

Paul rejects the safer option of calling for help through a window. He believes he must follow Sophie and try to make her captor release her, although he recognizes that he has no reliable plan. He follows the sounds of commotion downstairs and enters reception, where at least twenty Goblins have gathered. They stop their apparent game with the metal waste-paper basket when he arrives. Paul raises the spear and shouts at them, trying to turn their hesitation into another retreat.

Most of the group runs, but a larger Goblin remains. It is broad-shouldered, carries a knife and an iron club, and throws the club at Paul. Paul ducks, backs along the front desk, and grabs the first object his hand finds. It is the Long stapler Sophie had earlier mentioned as equipment that should be put back after use. Paul uses it to strike the Goblin’s hand, then catches its arm and presses the stapler against its palm. The improvised weapon gives him an opening to get away from its attack.

The Goblin backs into a bookshelf in the waiting area. The shelf holds 103 bound volumes of the Journal of Meteorological Studies, covering June 1949 through December 1957. A blow from the Goblin’s helmet damages one of the shelf’s wooden brackets, and the volumes fall onto the attacker in sequence, bringing it down. Paul is momentarily absorbed by the unexpected spectacle, then seizes the chance to restrain the Goblin. Before he can decide what to do next, Dennis appears in the doorway and demands to know what Paul is doing.

Dennis Tanner’s intervention

Paul initially apologizes automatically for being in the building after hours. He then remembers that Sophie has been taken and tells Dennis that one of the creatures has a knife at her throat. The threat changes the priority of the exchange: Paul’s concern is no longer whether he has broken an office rule, but whether Dennis will act. Dennis tells him to stay where he is and not create more trouble, then goes through the fire door.

While waiting, Paul sets down the Long stapler and approaches the Goblin pinned beneath the books. He offers it a hand, but it recoils from him. Dennis returns about a minute later with Sophie, who appears dazed but has no visible injury. Paul wants to go to her, yet holds back, recognizing that an embrace would not be welcome in the circumstances. Dennis seats Sophie in the receptionist’s chair and approaches the fallen Goblin. He communicates with it through a sequence of cries, and it answers before taking his wrist and standing. Keeping Dennis between itself and Paul, the Goblin allows Dennis to escort it across reception and out through the door. At the threshold it points a claw at Paul and shrieks; Dennis closes the door after it.

This quiet, controlled exit sharply contrasts with the violent confusion that preceded it. Dennis does not treat the Goblin as an inexplicable monster or ask Paul to explain what it is. He appears to understand how to approach it, and the Goblin responds to him in a way it did not respond to Paul. Sophie’s return, meanwhile, resolves the immediate danger without making the encounter ordinary: Paul has seen creatures armed with office weapons, and Dennis has dealt with them as if their presence belongs to a known, if alarming, set of circumstances.

What the attack reveals

After the immediate crisis, Dennis begins to explain the firm’s nature. He gives Paul and Sophie a sheet bearing J.W. Wells & Co.’s formal description as supernatural consultants, paranormal engineers, and practical metaphysicians. The attack thus changes the meaning of the office details already presented: locked doors, strongroom keys, archived material, and the Long stapler sit alongside work that concerns supernatural phenomena. The revelation does not arrive as an abstract explanation first; it follows a practical emergency in which those phenomena have entered the reception area and required an improvised response.

Later, Dietrich Wurmtoter explains that the firm’s Mortensen Counters record supernatural activity around the world. Their readings are transmitted as numerical data, which employees must sort and interpret; some counters are even described as operating in planetary orbit. That account extends the contrast exposed by the attack. J.W. Wells & Co. treats the supernatural not only as a threat to survive but as a field of information to monitor and process, complete with reports, procedures, and clerical work.

The episode also establishes a limit to Paul’s new-found ability to act under pressure. His unaccountable instinct helps him hold the first Goblins at bay, and his willingness to follow Sophie leads him into the larger reception-room confrontation. Yet the same attempt to frighten the creatures away contributes to the moment in which Sophie is seized; force alone cannot solve the danger. He must recognize when to stop, and her safe return ultimately comes through Dennis’s authority and familiarity with the Goblins. The office attack therefore serves as both a rescue episode and a threshold: Paul and Sophie’s employment has brought them into a workplace where the supernatural is not metaphorical, and the firm’s administrative routines are only the visible surface of a much stranger business.