The Infernals (26 page)

“How are you, Samuel?” said Mrs. Abernathy at last.

“I could be better,” said Samuel. “After all, I’m in Hell. With you.”

“It’s your own fault. I warned you against meddling in my affairs back on Earth.”

“I didn’t have any choice but to meddle in them. You sent demons to kill me.”

“And very unsatisfactory they were too, given that they failed. It’s so hard to get good staff these days. That’s why I took it upon myself to drag you to Hell and, lo and behold, here you are. If I’d taken the time to kill you myself back in Biddlecombe, think of all the trouble I’d have avoided. Your home would be a place of ash and fire by now.”

“Well, sorry it didn’t work out for you,” said Samuel.

“Don’t be sarcastic, Samuel. It’s a very low form of wit.
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You know, now that I have you, you seem so much less worthy of the pursuit. I’ve spent all this time raging against you, planning the horrors I would inflict upon you, and it made me forget that you’re really only a little boy, a little boy who got lucky for a while, and whose luck has now run out. Yet such trouble you’ve caused me, and so much distress and humiliation.”

“Is that why you’re falling apart?”

Mrs. Abernathy examined the index finger that had just lost its nail.

“Yes, in a way,” she said. “Cut off from my master, I am like a tree without sunlight, a flower without water, a kitten without milk, a—”

She stopped talking when she sensed that the examples she was using were hardly appropriate for an archdemon of Hell. Flowers? Kittens? She was sicker than she thought …

She stretched out a hand in the direction of the vast army of demons that had assembled, awaiting her command.

“You’re the cause of all this,” she said. “Armies are marching because of you. Demon stands against demon, duke against duke. I have ordered the annihilation of four legions in order to keep you safe. Hell has never seen such conflict, such turmoil. And all because of a little boy who couldn’t keep his nose out of the business of others, and a demon who believed that he could escape my wrath in a fast car.”

At this, Samuel could not hide his shock.

“Oh, that’s got your attention, hasn’t it?” said Mrs. Abernathy gloatingly. “You thought I didn’t know about your friend Nurd, the so-called Scourge of Five Deities?”

“He doesn’t call himself that any longer,” said Samuel. “It’s just Nurd. Unlike you, he doesn’t have any delusions of grandeur.” Samuel had heard his mother use that phrase about Mrs. Browburthy, who was the chairperson of practically every committee in Biddlecombe and ruled them all like a dictator. He was rather pleased that he’d found an opportunity to use it now.

“Delusions?” said Mrs. Abernathy. “No, I have no delusions. I was great once, and then I was humbled, but I will be great again, mark me, and you will be the gift that restores me to my rightful place. As for Nurd, I will hunt him down when I have handed you over to my master. He will be tortured, just as you will be, but the greatest torment that I can devise will be to ensure that you and he never set eyes on each other again. You will have eternity to miss him, and he you, assuming you can find time for such fine feelings amid your own sufferings.”

She leaned in close to the bars and whispered to Samuel: “And you can’t even begin to imagine what I’m going to do to your rotten little dog, but I’ll make sure that you can hear his howls of misery from wherever you are.”

Mrs. Abernathy turned her back on Samuel and walked to the edge of the cliff that overlooked her army. She raised her right hand, and opened her mouth.

“Heed me!” she cried. The Infernals assembled below grew silent, and gave her their attention. “We are close to the moment
of our triumph. The boy, Samuel, who foiled our invasion of Earth, who ensured that we would continue to suffer in this place, is in my grasp. We will take him to our master, the Great Malevolence, and we will offer the boy to him like a juicy fly to a spider. Our Dark Lord will arise from his grief, and all who were loyal to me will be rewarded, and all those who took arms against me and, in doing so, betrayed our master will be punished forever.”

A great cheer rose from the ranks, and blades and claws and teeth flashed.

“But first our foes must be vanquished,” Mrs. Abernathy continued. “Already they gather before the entrance to the Mountain of Despair, intent upon instituting a new order in Hell, as if their ambitions can ever compare to the purity of our master’s evil. They are led by the traitor Abigor, and great will be his suffering when victory is achieved. Now look upon our prize!”

The Watcher ascended, and its claws grasped the ring at the top of the cage. The gilded prison rose into the air, and suddenly Samuel was sailing over the lines of demons, hundreds of thousands strong, all screaming their hatred at him as the cage flew barely inches above their heads, their spears and knives and sharp claws aimed at him as though hoping that they might save the Great Malevolence the trouble of ripping him apart. Samuel saw demons mounted on dragons and serpents, on toads and spiders and living fossils. He saw battle machines: catapults, and cannons, and great spiked wagons. He saw, amid the chaos of the lesser demons, the massed, ordered ranks of the legions, their loyalties distinguished by the banners of each duke, although
those banners always flew lower than the standards depicting a horned figure set against a black background.

At last Samuel was lowered onto a flat wagon, where Mrs. Abernathy was already waiting for him. She ordered a black cloth to be placed over the cage, “a taste of the greater blackness to come,” and Samuel’s last sight as the cloth fell was of Mrs. Abernathy’s triumphant, grinning visage.

The Watcher resumed its perch above the gathering. It saw the legions take the head of a column that began to snake toward the Mountain of Despair, the untrained masses falling loosely into place behind the troops. A fresh mount had been found for Mrs. Abernathy, a massive hybrid of horse and serpent, its snake head snapping at its bridle, upon which she sat sidesaddle at the head of her army. She had even donned a new dress for the occasion, a little blue number with a lace collar. The wagon bearing the covered cage was surrounded by a phalanx of legionnaires who had been gifted to Mrs. Abernathy by the allied dukes, and now bore a new coat of arms: a lady’s handbag, decorated with a yellow daisy.

Curious, thought the Watcher. Appropriate, but … curious.

T
HE WAGON RUMBLED BENEATH
Samuel, tossing him from side to side as its rough-hewn wheels passed over the uneven ground. The repeated impacts against the cage were bruising his body, so he tried to hold on tight to the bars to prevent himself from being injured further. The cloth that covered the cage was quite thick, although Samuel’s silhouette was still visible to those outside when lightning flashed, and he could just make out a tiny sliver of landscape visible through a hole in the material. When the wagon at last found itself on even ground, Samuel crawled over to the hole, knelt down, and peered out.

Elevated as he was above the surrounding horde, Samuel could see some distance across the Plains of Desolation. The Mountain of Despair rose before him, so big that it dominated the entire horizon, the extent of its base impossible to measure, its peak lost amid the battling clouds. There was an opening visible at the foot of the mountain, tiny by comparison with
the great mass of black rock, but still huge enough to accommodate a hundred men standing on one another’s shoulders, with room to spare so that the topmost man would not bang his head. Samuel had seen that opening before: through it, the Great Malevolence had briefly emerged just as it seemed his invasion of the world of men was destined to succeed. The memory reminded Samuel of what he was about to face: the vengeance of the most fearful being the Multiverse had ever known, an entity of pure evil, a creature without love, or pity, or mercy.

Terrified though he was, Samuel did not weaken. It is one thing to be brave in front of others, perhaps for fear of being branded a coward and becoming diminished in their eyes, but another entirely to be brave when there is nobody to witness your courage. The latter is an elemental bravery, a strength of spirit and character. It is a revelation of the essence of the self, and as Samuel crouched in his cage, slowly approaching the place in which his doom would be fixed, his face was calm and his soul was at peace. He had done nothing wrong. He had stood up for what he believed was right in order to protect his friends, his mother, his town, and the Earth itself. He did not rail at the unfairness of what was to come, for he understood in his heart that it would serve no purpose and would only make his torment harder to endure.

Had there been a soul inside Mrs. Abernathy for her to examine, or had her vanity and lust for power and revenge not clouded her insight, she might have come to understand that she did not so much hate Samuel Johnson as fear him. There
was an essential goodness to him that she could not touch, a decency that remained untainted by all that he had experienced so far in his short life. Samuel Johnson was human, with all of the flaws and foibles that came with his species. He could be jealous and sad, angry and selfish, but in him a little part of the best of humanity glowed brightly, just as it illuminates so many of us if we choose to let it. What Mrs. Abernathy did not grasp was that, despite all that she or her master might visit upon him, she would never, ever defeat Samuel Johnson, and no matter how deep or dark the place in which he was interred, his soul would continue to shine.

The wagon ascended an incline, and as it reached the top Samuel gasped, for arrayed on the plain before him was another mighty army: row upon row of demon legionnaires, their long shields catching the reflection of the bolts of lightning that broke through the clouds above with greater and greater frequency and ferocity, as though the angry spirits in the skies were urging on the opposing forces, seeking on the battlefield below a reflection of their own wrath. Mounted cavalry were moving into position, the eyes of their skinless steeds like hot coals set in ash, their hooves striking sparks from the stony ground.

Behind the main ranks strode the monsters of the underworld: Cyclopses, and minotaurs, and snake-headed hydrae; gigantic Gorgons, their faces masked with plates of gold until the order came to reveal themselves, but their serpentine locks already writhing in anticipation of the fighting to come; and lurching, predatory creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of vicious animals. Many of the beasts seemed familiar
to Samuel, and not merely because they had formed part of the huge force originally destined to conquer the Earth. These were the monsters that shadowed all of the Earth’s mythologies and religions, the beings that had appeared to the ancients in nightmares and had found their way into legends and fairy tales.

Allied with them were jumbled entities that had never been imagined before, for only madness could have conjured up such visions: heads on legs, scuttling sideways like crabs, sharp teeth snapping; creatures that were hybrids of shark and spider, of toad and bat, of earwig and dog, as though segments of every animal that ever existed on Earth had been tossed in a great vat and allowed to fuse with one another.

And then there were beings that bore no resemblance to anything from Samuel’s world, even in the most passing of ways: shifting masses of matter that reached out with wisps of darkness, probing for prey; fleshy globes with a thousand mouths; and entities that existed only as painful sounds, or poisonous smells. It seemed that no force could stand up to such horrors and triumph, yet similar creatures, and worse, had gathered to serve Mrs. Abernathy. Her army might have been more ragged and less disciplined than her enemy’s, with fewer of the trained legions to array themselves meticulously for battle, but Samuel believed that Mrs. Abernathy’s strength was greater overall. The conflict would be a test of strategy against might, of military training against sheer weight of numbers.

But regardless of who won, Samuel would ultimately lose, for all here wished him harm.

• • •

The Watcher flew high over the battlefield, higher even than the winged scout demons of Mrs. Abernathy and Duke Abigor, so high that the gathering combatants were lost to it and there was only cloud below and the peaks of the Mountain of Despair rising before it. The Watcher had made its decision. It could not stand by and watch Hell torn apart. Its loyalty was to one, and one only: the Great Malevolence.

It was time for the bells to ring.

At the entrance to the Mountain of Despair, Brompton and Edgefast were regarding the awesome armies, the greatest ever gathered in conflict in Hell’s long history, with the slightly bored air of men who are watching a repeat of a football game to which they already know the final score, and which hadn’t been very interesting the first time around.

“Busy out there today,” said Edgefast. Despite the fact that he could quite easily have had himself reassembled after Mrs. Abernathy tore him apart, he was still a severed head resting beside a pile of assorted limbs and bits of torso, although he now had a cushion, thanks to an uncharacteristic moment of weakness on the part of Brompton. Edgefast had elected to remain a talking head because (a) he claimed that his experience had altered his view of Hell, and he now saw the world, quite literally, from a different angle; (b) he no longer had to worry about laundry, or tying his shoelaces; and (c) he could spot anyone really small who might try to sneak in. This had seemed perfectly acceptable to Brompton, who didn’t want to have to bother getting to know another new guard.

“Suppose so,” said Brompton, picking at his teeth. “If you like that kind of thing.”

“Makes a change, though, doesn’t it, all them demons milling around? Very exciting, I’d say.”

“I don’t approve of change,” said Brompton. “Or excitement.” He shifted from one foot to another, and looked uncomfortable. “Mind you, I shouldn’t have had that last cup of tea. Gone right through me, that has. I’m about to have an accident. Look, mind the shop for five minutes while I go and, you know, make myself lighter in a liquid way.”