The Infernals (29 page)

Mrs. Abernathy might have hidden the seeds of the portal within herself, but she had not intended it to be used in the manner to which Samuel, Nurd, and company had just put it. She had planned on manifesting it at a point outside herself and then, with her master’s help, drawing all the power that she could from the Collider in one fell swoop and reversing the portal’s direction of travel, so that instead of moving objects from Earth to Hell, it would move them from Hell to Earth. It would not be enough to pass an army through, but it would be enough to transport the Great Malevolence and herself to the world of men, and there they would create a new Hell, just the two of them. Unfortunately that plan now looked like it would have to be put on the back burner, for Mrs. Abernathy had more pressing concerns.

Her body shuddered. She gagged and choked, like someone who has swallowed a piece of food that has gone down the wrong way, which, in a vehicular sense, was more or less what had happened. The blue light grew stronger and brighter, so bright that the assembled demons, even the Great Malevolence himself, were forced to look away from it, so bright that it turned from blue to white, and burned so strongly that Mrs. Abernathy screamed.

The portal collapsed, and Mrs. Abernathy imploded, her being turning in upon itself, the substance of her spiraling inward as every atom in her body was separated from the next. Her disguise of human skin was sucked from her, revealing the old monster within. Her segmented jaws were pulled into her throat, her tentacles folded themselves over the front of her body as though to protect her, and there was a soft popping sound as the portal closed and the fragments of her being were scattered throughout the Multiverse.

T
HERE WAS A BLUE
flash on Ambrose Bierce Drive and two vehicles appeared: an Aston Martin, its windows so cracked that it was impossible to see through them, its four wheels splayed outward like the legs of a collapsing animal so that the car rested on its underside; and a very battered ice-cream van, containing four similarly battered dwarfs covered from head to toe in raspberry syrup; two policemen whose hats had melted; and one bewildered ice-cream salesman with smoking hair.

“Next time we take the train,” said Jolly, staggering from the back of the van. “I feel like I’ve been dragged through a washing machine backward.”

His fellow dwarfs joined him, Dozy utilizing one of his horns to scrape up the last of the syrup. Acrid smoke began to emerge from beneath the van, quickly followed by flickering flames. Dan, Dan the Ice-Cream Man looked on mournfully as the remains of his business went up in smoke.

“Perhaps I wasn’t really cut out to be an ice-cream salesman,” he said. “At least the insurance will cover it, I suppose.”

Jolly tapped him on the arm. “Think you’ll buy a new van, then?”

“Probably. Don’t know what I’ll do with it, though.”

“Funny you should mention that,” said Jolly, adopting his most trustworthy of expressions. “How would you feel about transporting four hardworking, self-motivated individuals to a variety of business engagements?”

“Sounds all right,” said Dan.

“It does, doesn’t it?” said Jolly. “I wish we actually
knew
four hardworking, self-motivated individuals, but in their absence, how about driving the four of us around instead?”

Sergeant Rowan and Constable Peel helped Nurd, Wormwood, Samuel, and Boswell to free themselves from the Aston Martin, as the doors had buckled badly when they traveled through the portal.

Nurd patted the roof of the car sadly. “I think she may have taken her last trip,” he said, as Wormwood wiped a tear from his eye. Wormwood had grown to love the Aston Martin almost as much as he loved Nurd; more so, even, as the car had never hit him with a scepter, used unpleasant language toward him, or threatened to bury him upside down in sand for eternity.

“At least you have a car, or what’s left of one,” said Constable Peel. “How are we going to explain the loss of our patrol car, Sarge? And where did it go?”

“We’ll never know, son,” said Sergeant Rowan.
41

Suddenly, there was movement in the flaming ice-cream van, and seconds later Shan and Gath emerged from the conflagration, patting out small patches of fire on their fur.

“Forgot about them,” said Angry, with the casual air of someone who has left a shoelace undone rather than abandoned two creatures to an inferno of metal and plastic.

“Where did they come from?” asked Constable Peel.

“We hid them in the fridges while you were up front with the sarge and Dan,” said Jolly. “Sorry. I mean, it wasn’t like we could leave them in Hell, not after that winged bloke found Samuel at their cave. It wouldn’t have been fair.”

“We’ve brought four demons to Earth,” said Sergeant Rowan. He had gone rather pale. “They’ll have my stripes.”

Constable Peel grinned. “I don’t have any stripes.”

“I know. They’ll have your guts for garters instead.”

“Oh.”

“Indeed. Not grinning now, are you?”

“But we’ll get into terrible trouble, Sarge, and I’ve had enough trouble to last a lifetime. The chief constable isn’t going to approve of us bringing demons back from Hell. He doesn’t even like going abroad for his holidays because it’s full of foreigners. If we tell him what we’ve done, we’ll be directing traffic for the rest of our lives.”

Sergeant Rowan looked at Shan and Gath. Having put out the flames on their fur, they were now fortifying themselves with the last of their home brew.

“Then we won’t tell him,” said Sergeant Rowan.

“But we can’t just leave them and Nurd and Wormwood to wander around. It wouldn’t be right.”

“We’re not going to leave them to wander around either,” said Sergeant Rowan. “Constable Peel, I have a plan.”

Nurd looked at the blue sky above his head, clouds scudding across it, lit by the amber glow of a beautiful setting sun. He smelled flowers, and grass, and burning ice-cream cones. He saw a cat scratching its back against a pillar, and a bird pecking seeds from a feeder. He felt exhilarated, and free.

And very afraid. He was an alien creature here, a demon. They might hate him, or fear him, and lock him away. What
about Wormwood? Wormwood had barely been able to look after himself in Hell. Without Nurd he’d be lost, but even Nurd wasn’t sure how they were going to survive in the world of men.

A hand grasped his, squeezing it tightly. Nurd looked down and saw Samuel. Beside him, Boswell wagged his tail.

“It’s going to be okay,” said Samuel. “Look, you have a whole new world to explore.”

The whole trip to Hell, with all of its traumas and triumphs, had lasted a mere three hours on Earth, and his mother, although worried, had not yet begun to actively fret, although she did as soon as Samuel explained to her what had occurred. A cup of tea was definitely in order, but this time Mrs. Johnson went out to get the milk herself while Samuel had a bath. When Mrs. Johnson returned Wormwood was in the bath, and Nurd was wearing one of Mr. Johnson’s old bathrobes and blowing bubbles from a small plastic pipe.

“What are we going to do about those two?” asked Mrs. Johnson as she arranged tea and cake on a tray. “They can’t stay here forever. We don’t have enough room.”

“There’s a plan,” said Samuel.

And there was.

Samuel went to school as usual the following morning. To those who were perceptive enough to spot the changes, like Tom and Maria, he seemed older somehow, but also stronger and more determined, even before he told his two closest friends all that
had happened the previous day. Then, his spare glasses fixed firmly upon his nose, he strode up to the canteen, where he found Lucy Highmore and two of her friends finishing some homework at one of the tables.

“Hello,” said Samuel to Lucy. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Lucy nodded, and her friends packed up their books and departed, giggling. Lucy looked hard at Samuel Johnson for the first time. She had never been unkind to him, but neither had she exchanged more than a couple of words with him before. They were in different classes, and only mixed at assembly. Now, face to face, and with no distractions, she thought that he was quite handsome in a funny way, and although they were the same age, there was a sadness, and a wisdom, in his eyes that made him appear older than she.

“My name’s Samuel.”

“I know.”

“Yesterday I asked out a letter box, thinking it was you.”

“Do I look like a letter box?”

“No, not really. Not at all, actually.”

“So it wasn’t an easy mistake to make, then?”

“No.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Yes, I would expect so.”

There was a silence between them for a time.

“Well?” said Lucy.

“Well,” said Samuel, “I was rather hoping that you might like to join me at Pete’s for a pie after school on Friday, if you weren’t busy.”

Lucy considered the offer, then smiled regretfully.

“I’m sorry. I’m busy on Friday.”

“Oh,” said Samuel. He bit his lip, and turned away. At least I tried, he thought.

“I’m not busy on Saturday, though…”

“How did it go?” asked Maria, when she encountered Samuel in the corridor later that day.

“She said yes,” said Samuel.

“Oh, good,” said Maria, and walked away, and Samuel thought that she seemed to be troubled by something in her eye.

Life can be difficult. In fact life is often difficult. It’s especially difficult when you’re young and trying to find your place in the great scheme of things, but if it’s any consolation, most people do find that place in the end.

In a basement deep in the headquarters of Spiggit’s Brewery, Chemical Weapons & Industrial Cleaning Products Ltd, Shan and Gath, dressed in pristine white coats, moved intently around a laboratory equipped with the latest in brewing technology. Beside the laboratory were their living quarters, with comfortable beds, seats, a television, and a pinball machine, a game at which Shan in particular was surprisingly adept, when he had the time and inclination to play it, which wasn’t very often. After all, Shan and Gath had discovered one of the secrets of happiness: find something that you would have
done anyway as a hobby, and convince someone to pay you good money to do it instead.
42
Their days were now spent developing Spiggitt’s new boutique range of beers: Spiggit’s Summer Rain Ale, Spiggit’s Gentle Sunbeam Amber, Spiggit’s Strawberry Sunrise Lager, that kind of thing, beers of subtle fragrance and delicate taste designed for the gentler, more discerning drinker.

Or big girlie men, as Shan and Gath liked to think of them.

They were also responsible for a separate line of beers for those with a more, um, “robust” constitution. These included Spiggit’s Very Peculiar, Spiggit’s Distinctly Unpleasant, and the notorious Spiggit’s Old Detestable, which now came in extra-thick glass bottles with a lock on the cap after the yeast in one batch tried to make a break for freedom. But there was always a place in their fridge, and in their hearts, for Spiggit’s Old Peculiar.

After all, there was no improving on perfect imperfection.

Some days later, in another, much larger, basement area, within sniffing distance of the chimneys of the Spiggit works, a sleek red sports car careened out of control and struck a brick wall
with so much force that its rear wheels lifted from the ground as the hood crumpled and pieces of engine, car body, and possibly passenger body as well flew into the air. The back of the car seemed to hang suspended in its death throes, then fell back to the concrete with a bang.

For a time there was only silence.

A creaking noise came from somewhere in the mass of twisted metal. The driver’s door opened or, more correctly, the driver’s door fell off, and a dazed-looking Nurd staggered from the wreckage. Wormwood ran to him and helped him remove his crash helmet and gloves. Nurd gazed up uncertainly at a long window, behind which various engineers, designers, and safety experts sat, their heads craned to catch Nurd’s words. Samuel Johnson stood close to the glass, clearly relieved. No matter how often he watched this happen, he was always glad, and surprised, when his friend survived relatively unscathed.

“Well,” said Nurd at last, “the seat belt works, but you might need to take a look at the brakes …”

As I said, most people, and some demons, find their place in life in the end.

P
ROFESSOR
H
ILBERT
, P
ROFESSOR
S
TEFAN
, Ed, Victor, and the senior Collider scientists were gathered in a meeting room at CERN as the Collider went about its business around them.

“And the boy says that he was dragged to Hell?” said Professor Stefan.

Professor Hillbert nodded. “The return of the Aston Martin, or what’s left of it, seems to support his story.”

“And he was there along with four dwarfs, two policemen, their patrol car, an ice-cream salesman, and an ice-cream van?”

Professor Hillbert nodded again.

“An ice-cream van? You’re sure it was an ice-cream van?”

“A Mr. Happy Whip ice-cream van,” confirmed Professor Hilbert.

“Mr. Happy Whip,” repeated Professor Stefan solemnly, as if this fact were particularly important.

“They didn’t bring any, er …”

“Demons?”

“Yes, demons, they didn’t bring any
back,
did they?”

“The policemen, Samuel Johnson, and Mr. Dan, Dan the Ice-Cream Man, who is now apparently managing the dwarfs, all confirm the general absence of demons from this world.”

“And the dwarfs?”

“The dwarfs are very unpleasant. In fact, for a time we thought that
they
were demons,” said Professor Hilbert. “One of them threw a beer bottle at Ed.”