The Infernals (17 page)

“Two bags of jelly beans, please,” said Nurd. “And a cone with chocolate.”

He waved a small gold coin in the air, just as Constable Peel’s head appeared through the service hatch.

“Well, well, well,” said Constable Peel. “Would you look at who it is?”

Nurd’s jaw dropped. Wormwood helpfully picked it up and reattached it.

“Oh, nuts,” said Nurd.

“No,” said Constable Peel, “but we do have sprinkles …”

S
AMUEL AND
B
OSWELL, FRIGHTENED
and tired, traversed the landscape of Hell. There were great causeways of stone that crossed chasms filled with fire, and dark lakes in whose depths swam nightmarish forms, their fins and tails occasionally breaking the surface as they hunted and were hunted. They saw demons large and small, sometimes in the distance, sometimes up close, but even those upon whose path they stumbled paid them little or no attention. They seemed to assume that if Samuel and Boswell were there, then they were meant to be, and were therefore some other demon’s concern, not theirs.

But for the most part there wasn’t a great deal to see, for Hell looked largely unfinished to Samuel and Boswell. True, the skies above their heads continued to rage, and Samuel sometimes felt that the clouds were looking down and mocking him
before resuming their never-ending conflict of noise and light, but vast stretches of Hell’s landscape had little or nothing to offer at all.
30
There was just dirt beneath their feet, or cracked stone, or low mounds of short black grass unenlivened by even a single weed.

After a time, the ground began to slope upward, and they ascended a small hill. As they reached the crest they saw arrayed before them an enormous banquet. It covered a table that stretched so far into the distance that Samuel lost sight of it in the dreary white mist always lurking on the horizon, but he could see every kind of food imaginable laid out on it, from breads to desserts and everything in between, with dusty bottles of fine wine interspersed among the bowls and dishes. It was a feast beyond compare, yet although Samuel and Boswell were starving, they did not feel their appetites piqued by what they saw. Perhaps it was because the food, regardless of its type, was a uniform dull gray, or because, even as they drew closer, they could detect no smell from it.

Or it may have been the behavior of those seated at the banquet, for chairs stood side by side along the length and breadth
of the table, so close that there was no room for anyone else to squeeze in, and they were all occupied by thin, wasted people who forced food constantly into their mouths, and guzzled wine while their jaws chomped tirelessly, half-chewed meats and gray liquid dripping from their chins and staining their clothes.

Samuel and Boswell were now close enough to the feast to be noticed by the man seated at the head of the table. He wore a tuxedo with a crooked bow tie. His shirt buttons were open, and a distended belly bulged through the gap, but it was not the belly of a fat person. Samuel had seen poor, hungry people on television, and he knew that chronic malnutrition made the stomach swell. This man was starving, yet he had more than enough food to eat. While Samuel watched, the man tossed aside a half-eaten chicken leg and began chomping on a juicy, if slate-colored, steak. As one dish was finished a new one appeared, so that there was never an empty plate on the table.

The man spotted Samuel, but he did not stop eating.

“Get away,” he said. “There isn’t enough for anyone else.”

“There’s barely enough for us,” said a woman to his left, who was eating caviar with a huge wooden spoon, shoveling the little fish eggs into her mouth. She wore an ornate ball gown, and her head was topped by a white wig dotted with crystals. “And you haven’t been invited.”

“How do you know?” asked Samuel.

“Because if you were invited there would be a chair for you, but there isn’t, so you haven’t. Now run along. Don’t you know
that you shouldn’t interrupt people when they’re eating? You’re making me talk with my mouth full. That’s rude.”

“And she’s spilling some,” said a tall bald man sitting across from her. “If she doesn’t want that caviar, I’ll have it.”

He reached for the bowl, but the woman slapped him hard on the hand with the spoon.

“Get your own!” she snapped.

“But the food has no smell,” said Samuel, almost to himself.

“No smell,” said the man in the tuxedo. “No taste. No texture. No color. But I’m
so
hungry, always
so
hungry.” He polished off the steak and moved on to a bowl of trifle, using his hand to scoop up mouthfuls of jelly, sponge, and custard. “I’m so hungry, I could eat you. And your dog.”

And for the first time in centuries, for he had been at the table for a very, very long time, the man in the tuxedo stopped eating, and began thinking. There was a new hunger in his eyes as he examined Samuel the way a chef might examine a pig that has been offered to him by the butcher, sizing it up for the best cuts. Beside him, the woman turned her gaze on Samuel, her mouth open, caviar falling from her tongue. The tall bald man set aside a fish head, and picked up a sharp knife.

“Proper food,” he whispered. “Fresh meat.”

The words were taken up by the elderly man beside him, and the wizened old lady whose toothless jaws could only suck the meat from bones, and the children dressed like princes and princesses, passed on and on down the table until they, like the distant, starving guests at the feast, were lost in the mist.

“Fresh meat, fresh meat, fresh meat …”

Samuel picked up Boswell and backed away from the table. The man in the tuxedo put his hands on the arms of the chair, preparing to rise, but found that he could not stand. He tried to shift his chair, as if hoping to shuffle it toward Samuel, but it would not budge. His hands stretched for Samuel, but Samuel was beyond his reach. The tall bald man with the sharp knife howled in fury, slashing at the air with the blade as though his limbs might somehow extend far enough to cut Samuel’s flesh.

The bewigged woman tried to be more cunning. “Come here, little boy,” she whispered, offering him a gray piece of chocolate. “I’ll protect you from them. I had a little boy of my own once. I wouldn’t hurt a child.”

But Samuel was no fool. He stayed out of her reach, clutching Boswell tightly.

“At least leave us your dog,” said the man in the tuxedo. “I hear dog is very tasty.”

All along the table voices were raised, shouting threats, promises, bribes, anything that might convince Samuel to approach, or to hand Boswell over, but Samuel just backed away, never taking his eyes from them, fearful that if he did so they might find a way to free themselves from the prison of their chairs. Then, one by one, their appetites got the better of them until the guests resumed their great, tasteless meal, all but the woman with the wig, who stared after Samuel, repeating over and over to herself, “I had a little boy of my own, long ago …”, and only when Samuel was again at the crest of the hill did she turn back to her caviar and lose herself once more in the feast.

• • •

Samuel and Boswell moved on. They saw a great wooden horse burning; around it sat Greek warriors, lost in melancholy. Warily, Samuel approached them, but the warriors did not stir, and when he tried to speak to them they did not answer.

“What do you want, child?” said a voice, and Samuel turned to see a woman emerge from the sand: first the head, then the body, until she stood before him, grains tumbling from her hair, her hands, her gown. As Samuel looked more closely at her he saw that she had not merely risen from the sand: she
was
sand, different textures and hues combining to give the impression of clothing, and color, and life. Only her eyes were not formed from sand: they blazed a deep, fiery red, and Samuel knew that he was staring at a demon.

“This is … the Trojan horse, isn’t it?” said Samuel.

“It is.”

“And these are the men who used it to gain access to the city.”

“They are. The one who sits apart from the others, the man alone, that is Odysseus.” She spoke his name softly. “The horse was his idea.”

“But why are they here?”

“Because it was an act of deception. It was not honest, not truthful.”

“But it was clever.”

“A lie may be clever, but it is still a lie.”

“But don’t they say that all is fair in love and war? I heard that somewhere.”

“‘They’?” Who are ‘they’?”

“I don’t know. Just people.”

“That’s what the victorious claim, not the defeated; the powerful, not the powerless. ‘All is fair.’ ‘The end justifies the means.’ Is that what you believe?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is there someone that you love? A girl, perhaps?”

“There’s a girl that I like.”

“Would you lie to gain her affection?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“And if someone lied to her about you in order to turn her against you, would you feel that was fair?”

“No, of course not.”

“Have you heard it said that sport is war by other means?”

“I haven’t, but I suppose it could be true.”

“Do you cheat when you play games?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not right. It’s not …”

“Fair?”

“No, it’s not fair.”

“So all is
not
fair in love, and all is
not
fair in war.”

“I suppose not.” Samuel was troubled. He looked at the warriors, but none of them seemed to have paid any attention to his conversation with the demon. “It still seems like a harsh punishment,” he said.

“It is,” said the demon, with something like regret in her voice.

“Who decided?” asked Samuel. “Who decided that they should be here?”

“They decided,” said the demon. “They chose. Now go, child. Their melancholy is infectious.”

The grains of sand at her eyes formed a tear that shed itself upon her cheek. The demon sank back into the ground, and Samuel and Boswell turned away from the burning horse and continued their journey.

T
HE BARREN LANDSCAPE BEGAN
to change, although not for the better. It was now dotted with objects that seemed to come from another world, Samuel’s world: a suit of armor, empty and rusted; a German biplane from World War I; a submarine standing perfectly upright, balanced on its propellers; and a rifle, the largest, longest gun that Samuel had ever seen, so long that it would have taken him an hour or more just to walk around it, made up of millions and millions of smaller guns, all fused together to create a kind of giant sculpture. As Samuel examined it he saw that pieces of the rifle appeared to be alive, wriggling like metal snakes, and he realized that the rifle was still forming, weapons popping into existence in the air around it and slowly being absorbed into the whole.

A huge man appeared from behind the discarded turret of a tank. He wore dirty black overalls and a welder’s mask upon his face. In his right hand he held a blowtorch that burned with a white-hot flame. He killed the flame and pushed the mask
up so that his face was revealed. He was bearded, and his eyes shone with the same white fire as his torch, as though he had spent too long looking at metal dissolve.

“Who are you?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, but there was no hostility to his tone.

“My name is Samuel Johnson, and this is Boswell.”

Those white eyes looked down upon the little dachshund.

“A dog,” said the man. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen a dog.”

He reached out a gloved hand. Boswell shied away, but the hand was too quick. It fastened on Boswell’s head, then rubbed at it with a surprising gentleness.

“Good dog,” said the man. “Good little dog.”

He released his grip on Boswell, somewhat to the relief of the good little dog in question.

“I kept dogs,” he said. “A man should have a dog.”

“Do you have a name?” asked Samuel.

“I had a name once as well, but I’ve forgotten it. I have no use for it, for nobody has come here for so very long. Now I am the Blacksmith. I work with metal. It is my punishment.”

“What is this place?” asked Samuel.

“This is the Junkyard. It is the place of broken things that should never have been made. Come and see.”

And Samuel and Boswell followed the Blacksmith beneath the ever-changing gun, and past row upon row of fighter planes and armored cars, and there was revealed to them an enormous crater, and in it were swords and knives; machine guns and pistols; tanks and battleships and aircraft carriers; every conceivable weapon that might be used to inflict harm upon another
person. Like the great gun, the contents of the crater were constantly being added to, so that the whole mass of metal creaked and groaned and clattered and clanked.

“Why are they here?” asked Samuel.

“Because they took lives, and this is where they belong.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I designed such weapons, and I put them in the hands of those who would use them against innocents, and I did not care. Now I break them down.”

“What about the great gun, the one that keeps growing in size?”

“A reminder to me,” said the Blacksmith. “No matter how hard I work, or how many weapons I break down, still that rifle increases in size. I contributed to the creation of firearms in life, and I am not permitted to forget it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Samuel. “You don’t seem like a bad person.”

“I didn’t think that I was,” said the Blacksmith. “Or perhaps I just didn’t think. And you: why are you here?”

Samuel was still wary of telling the truth about his situation, particularly after his encounter with Old Ram, but something about the Blacksmith made Samuel trust him.

“I was dragged here. A woman—a demon—called Mrs. Abernathy wants to punish me.”